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SHAKESPEARE'S 



KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 



INTRODUCTION, AND NOTES EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL^ 



FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES. 



Rev. henry N. HUDSON, 

PROFESSOR OF SHAKESPEARE IN BOSTON UNIVERSITYo 



GINN & COMPANY 

BOSTON . NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 



[library of OONGRESsi 
Two Cooies Kecewes 

JUL 24 1908 

^ I COPt ^^ 

L ||,ia— ■■III i n " II »■ '■■■ H i W MT llt^ 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year i88o, by 

Henry N. Hudson, 
in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 

66.4 



GINN & COMPANY • PRO- 
PRIETORS . BOSTON • U.S.A. 



INTRODUCTION. 



History of the Play. 

THIS play was preceded by at least two others on the 
same subject. The first of these was in Latin, written 
by Dr. Thomas Legge, Master of Caius College, Cambridge, 
and is said to have been acted at the University as early as 
1579. Sir John Harrington, in his Apology for Poetry, 1591, 
speaks of this play as one that " would move Phalaris the 
tyrant, and terrify all tyrannous* minded men." There is no 
reason for thinking that Shakespeare ever saw it, or had any 
knowledge of it. The other was an EngHsh drama, printed 
in 1594, and called "The True Tragedy of Richard the 
Third : Wherein is shown the death of Edward the Fourth, 
with the smothering of the two young Princes in the Tower." 
We have no certain knowledge as to when this piece was 
written ; though no one doubts that the writing was several 
years previous to 1594. Shakespeare's drama indicates no 
acquaintance with it except in two or three slight particulars ; 
and even here the similarity infers no more knowledge than 
might well enough have been caught in the hearing. Other 
resemblances there are indeed, but only such as would natu- 
rally result from using a common authority. The older piece 
has httle that can be deemed worthy of notice. The work- 
manship, though crude and clumsy enough, displays honesty 
of mind, and is comparatively free from inflation and bom- 
bast. The piece is written partly in prose and partly in 



4 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

heavy blank-verse, interspersed with pentameter couplets and 
rhyming stanzas, and with passages of fourteen-syllable lines. 
It may be well to add, for the • curiosity of the thing, that, 
after Richard is killed. Report enters, and holds a dialogue 
with a Page, to give information of divers things not exhib- 
ited ; after which, two Messengers come in, and unfold what 
is to be done and who is to reign, all the way from Richard 
to Queen EHzabeth, the whole winding up with an elaborate 
panegyric on the latter. 

Shakespeare's drama was entered in the Stationers' regis- 
ter on the 20th of October, 1597, and was published the 
same year, but without the author's name. The play was 
reprinted in 1598, with "by William Shakespeare" added 
in the title-page. There was a third issue in 1602, a fourth 
in 1605, and a fifth in 1613; the last three all claiming to 
be "newly augmented," though in truth merely reprints of 
the former two. The play reappeared in the folio of 1623, 
with many slight alterations of text, with some omissions, 
and with a few additions, the latter extending in one place 
to fifty-five consecutive lines. Editors differ a good deal 
as to the comparative merits of the quarto and folio texts ; 
though all admit that each makes some damaging omissions 
which the other must be drawn upon to supply. Mr. White 
leans decidedly to the folio ; while Dyce, in his latest edi- 
tion, prefers the quarto text, on the whole. For myself, I 
can hardly speak further than that my preference goes some- 
times with the one, sometimes with the other. As the addi- 
tions in the folio do not amount to a general enlargement 
of the piece, it does not well appear what ground or pretext 
the quarto of 1602 may have had for claiming to be "newly 
augmented." Perhaps it was but a pubhsher's trick, to in- 
duce a larger sale of the new edition. The play, however, 



INTRODUCTION. t 

has very marked diversities of style and workmanship, some 
parts relishing strongly of the Poet's earlier, others as strongly 
of his middle period ; and I suspect the claim aforesaid may 
have referred, disingenuously indeed, to changes made in 
the piece before the issue of 1597. 

The great popularity of this play is shown in the number 
of editions called for, wherein it surpasses any other of the 
Poet's dramas. For, besides the five quarto issues already 
mentioned, there were also three others in quarto, after the 
folio appeared ; which proves that there was still a good de- 
mand for it in a separate form. It was also honoured beyond 
any of its fellows by the notice of contemporary writers. 
It is mentioned by Meres in his Palladis Tamia, 1598. 
Next, we have a very remarkable allusion to it in a poem 
published in 16 14, and entitled The Ghost of Richard the 
Third. The author of the poem gave only his initials, 
" C. B." ; who he was is not positively known ; some say 
Charles Best, others Christopher Brooke : but the strong 
commendatory verses upon him, which have come down to 
us from such pens as Ben Jonson, Chapman, and Wither, 
show him to have been a writer of no little distinction. The 
Ghost of Richard is made to speak as follows : 

To him that imp'd my fame with Clio's quill, 
Whose magic raised me from Oblivion's den, 
That writ my story on the Muses' hill. 
And with my actions dignified his pen ; 
He that from Helicon sends many a rill, 
Whose nectar'd veins are drunk by thirsty men ; 
Crown'd be his style with fame, his head with bays, 
And none detract, but gratulate his praise. 

Fuller, also, in his Church History, and Milton, in one of 
his political eruptions, refer to the play as well known ; and 
Bishop Corbet, writing in 161 7, gives a quaint description 



6 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

of his host at Bosworth, which is highly curious as witnessing 
both what an impression the play had made on the popular 
mind, and also how thoroughly the hero's part had become 
identified with Richard Burbage, the original performer of it : 

Mine host was full of ale and history ; 

And in the morning, when he brought us nigh 

Where the two Roses join'd, you would suppose 

Chaucer ne'er made The Romaunt of the Rose. 

Hear him : See you yon wood? there Richard lay 

With his whole artny. Look the other way. 

And, lo ! where Richmond in a bed of gorse 

Encamped himself all night, and all his force : 

Upon this hill they met. Why, he could tell 

The inch where Richmond stood, where Richard fell. 

Besides what of his knowledge he could say, 

He had authentic notice from the play ; 

Which I might guess by's mustering up the ghosts. 

And policies not incident to hosts ; 

But chiefly by that one perspicuous thing 

Where he mistook a player for a king : 

For, when he would have said, King Richard died, 

And call'd, A horse, a horse ! he Burbage cried ! 



Time of the "Writing. 

As regards the date of the composition, the entry at the 
Stationers' is the only clear item of external evidence that 
we have. The internal evidence makes strongly for as early 
a date as 1592 or 1593. The general style, though showing 
a decided advance on that of the Second and Third Parts 
of King Henry the Sixths is strictly continuous with it, while 
the history and characterization of the three plays so knit in 
together as to make them all of one piece and texture. And 
it is all but certain that the Poet's King Henry the Sixth was 
finished as early as 1592. In Clarence's account of his dream, 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

and in Tyrrel's description of the murder of the young Princes, 
Shakespeare is out in his plenitude of poetical wealth ; and 
the delineation of Richard is indeed a marvel of sustained 
vigour and versatile aptness : nevertheless the play, as a whole, 
evinces somewhat less maturity of power than King Richard 
the Second : in several cases there is great insubordination of 
the details to the general plan : the points of tragic stress are 
more frequent, and the dramatic motives more on the surface 
and more obvious, not to say obtrusive, than may well con- 
sist with the reason and law of Art : there is also too much 
piling-up of curses, or too much ringing of changes in impre- 
cation ; and in Richard's wooing of Lady Anne and of Queen 
Ehzabeth there is an excess of dialogical epigram and anti- 
phrastic point, with challenge and retort alternating through a 
prolonged series of stichometrical speeches : all which shows 
indeed a prodigious fertiHty of thought, but betrays withal a 
sort of mental incontinence, or a want of that self-restraining 
judgment which, in the Poet's later dramas, tempers all the 
parts and elements into artistic harmony and proportion. 
Then too the ethical idea or sense, instead of being duly 
poised or interfused with the dramatic current, comes too 
near overriding and displacing it ; the pressure of a special 
purpose marring the organic symmetry of the work. 

The close connection between this play and the Third Part 
oi King Henry the Sixth is so evident as to leave no occasion 
for tracing it out in detail. At the opening of the one we 
have Richard flouting in soliloquy at the " stately triumphs " 
and " mirthful comic shows " with which, at the close of the 
other. King Edward had proposed to celebrate the final and 
full establishment of his cause. It was indeed fitting that, on 
Richard's first appearance as a dramatic hero, we should 
overhear him at his old practice of ruminating aloud, and 



8 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

thus familiarizing his thoughts with the villainies which he has 
it in purpose to enact. Everybody may well be presumed to 
know how CoUey Gibber, being seized with a fit of progress, 
took upon him to reform Shakespeare's King Richard the 
Thij'd into fitness for the stage. As the original play was too 
long for representation, his mode of retrenching it to the 
proper compass was, in part, by transporting into it a scene 
or two from the foregoing play. I notice the fact, now, mere- 
ly as showing that he saw the perfect continuity of the two 
pieces ; though, as would seem, he did not perceive the 
absurdity of thus setting the catastrophe of one at the opening 
of the other. 

Date and Period of the Action. 

Historically considered, the play in hand embraces a period 
of something over fourteen years, namely, from the death of 
Henry, in May, 147 1, to the fall of Richard, in August, 1485. 
Half of this period, however, is dispatched in the first Act ; 
the funeral of Henry, the marriage of Richard with Lady Anne, 
and the death of Clarence being represented as occurring all 
about the same time ; whereas in fact they were separated 
by considerable intervals, the latter not taking place till Feb- 
ruary, 1478. And there is a similar abridgment, or rather 
suppression of time between the first Act and the second ; as 
the latter opens with the sickness of King Edward, his seem- 
ing reconciliation of the peers, and his death ; all which oc- 
curred in April, 1483. Thenceforward the events of the drama 
are mainly disposed in the order of their actual occurrence ; 
the drama being perhaps as true to the history as were prac- 
ticable or desirable in a work so different in its nature and 
use. 

This drawing together and massing of the scattered events 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

is eminently judicious ; for the plan of the drama required 
them to be used only as subservient to the hero's character ; 
and it does not appear how the Poet could have ordered 
them better for developing, in the most forcible manner, his 
idea of that extraordinary man. So that the selection and 
grouping of the secondary incidents are regulated by the 
paramount law of the work ; and they are certainly made to 
tell with masterly effect in furtherance of the author's purpose. 

Relation of the Play to History. 

As to the moral complexion of Shakespeare's Richard, 
the incidents whereby his character in this respect transpires 
are nearly all taken from the historians, with only such 
heightening as it is the prerogative of poetry to lend, even 
when most tied to actual events. In the Poet's time, the 
prevailing ideas of Richard were derived from the history 
of his life and reign written by Sir Thomas More. More's 
character as a man is above all suspicion of malice or un- 
fairness or rash judgment ; while his clear legal mind and 
his thorough training in the law rendered him a master in the 
art of sifting and weighing evidence. His early life was 
passed in the household of Cardinal Morton, who figures as 
Bishop of Ely in the play ; so that he had ready access to 
the best sources of information : and this, together with 
his " monumental probity ' ' and his approved goodness of 
heart, stamps his work with as much credibility as can well 
attach to any record of contemporary events. His book was 
written in 15 13, when he was thirty-three years old; and, in 
speaking of those concerned in the murder of the Princes, 
he says, " Dighton yet walketh on alive, in good possibility 
to be hanged ere he die." The character of Richard as 



10 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

drawn by ftim, and as received in the Poet's time, is well 
shown in Bacon's History of Henry the Seventh : 

" The body of Richard, after many indignities and re- 
proaches, the diriges and obsequies of the common people 
towards tyrants, was obscurely buried ; no man thinking 
any ignominy or contumely unworthy of him that had been 
the executioner of King Henry the Sixth, that innocent 
prince, with his own hands ; the contriver of the death of 
the Duke of Clarence, his brother ; the murderer of his two 
nephews, one of them his lawful king ; and vehemently 
suspected to have been the impoisoner of his wife, thereby 
to make vacant his bed for a marriage within the degrees 
forbidden. And although he were a prince in military virtue 
approved, jealous of the honour of the English nation, and 
likewise a good law-maker, for the ease and solace of the 
common people ; yet his cruelties and parricides, in the 
opinion of all men, weighed down his virtues and merits ; 
and, in the opinion of wise men, even those virtues them- 
selves were conceived to be rather feigned and affected 
things, to serve his ambition, than true qualities ingenerate 
in his judgment and nature." 

Nevertheless much has since been written to explode the 
current history of Richard, and to lessen, if not remove, 
the abhorrence in which his memory had come to be held. 
The Poet has not been left without his share of criticism 
and censure for the alleged blackening of his dramatic hero. 
This attempt at reforming pubHc opinion was led off by Sir 
George Buck, whose History of Richard the Third was 
published in 1646. The general drift of his book is well 
indicated by Fuller in his Church History, who is himself 
high authority on the matters in question : " He eveneth 
Richard's shoulders, smootheth his back, planeth his teeth, 



INTRODUCTION. II 

and maketh him in all points a comely and beautiful person. 
Nor stoppeth he here ; but, proceeding from his naturals to 
his morals, maketh him as virtuous as handsome ; conceal- 
ing most, denying some, defending others, of his foulest 
facts, wherewith in all ages since he standeth charged on 
record. For mine own part, I confess it is no heresy to 
maintain a paradox in history ; nor am I such an enemy to 
wit as not to allow it leave harmlessly to disport itself for 
its own content, and the delight of others. But when men 
do it cordially, in sober sadness, to pervert people's judg- 
ments, and therein go against all received records, I say 
that singularity is the least fault that can be laid to such 
men's charges." 

Something more than a century later, the work was re- 
sumed and carried on with much acuteness by Horace Wal- 
pole in his Historic Doubts. And several other writers have 
since put their hands to the same task. Still the old judg- 
ment seems likely to stand, the main substance thereof not 
having been much shaken yet. Dr. Lingard has carried 
to the subject his usual candour and research ; and, after 
dispatching the strong points urged on the other side, winds 
up his account of Richard thus : " Writers have indeed in 
modern times attempted to prove his innocence ; but their 
arguments are rather ingenious than conclusive, and dwindle 
into groundless conjectures when confronted with the evi- 
dence which may be arrayed against them." The killing of 
the two Princes formed the backbone of the guilt laid at 
Richard's door. That they did actually disappear, is tolera- 
bly certain ; that upon him fell whatever advantage could 
grow from their death, is equally so ; and it is for those who 
deny, the cause uniformly assigned at the time, and long 
after, for their disappearance, to tell us how and by whom 



12 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

they were put out of the way. And Sharon Turner, who 
may be justly ranked among the severest sifters of historic 
fictions and fables, is constrained to admit Richard's murder 
of his nephews ; and, so long as this blood-stain remains, the 
scouring of others, however it may diminish his crimes, will 
hardly lighten his criminality. 

But even if Shakespeare's delineation were proved to be 
essentially untrue to Richard as he was in himself, this 
would not touch the standing of his work as a dramatic 
reproduction of historical matter. For the Poet's vindica- 
tion on this score, it suffices that his Richard, so far at least 
as regards the moral complexion of the man, is substantially 
the Richard of the chroniclers, and of all the historical au- 
thorities received and studied in his time. Besides, to satisfy 
the nice scruples and queries of historic doubters and dialec- 
ticians, is not a poet's business : his concern is with Truth 
in her operative form, not in her abstract essence ; and to 
pursue the latter were to anatomize history, instead of repre- 
senting it. Whether, then, Richard was in fact guilty of 
such and such crimes, matters little ; it being enough that 
he was generally believed 'to be so, and that this belief was the 
mother-principle of those national events whereon the drama 
turns. That Richard was a prince of abundant head ; that 
his government was in the main wise and just ; that he was 
sober in counsel, brave in the field, and far-sighted in both ; 
— all this only renders it the harder to account for that 
general desertion which left him almost naked to his foes, 
but by such a deep and wide-spread conviction of his 
wickedness as no puttings-forth of intellect could overcome. 
Thus his fall, so sudden and complete, was mainly in virtue 
of what he was thought to be. And forasmuch as the char- 
acter generally set upon him at the time, if not the essential 



INTRODUCTION. 1 3 

truth regarding him, was the stuff out of which were spun 
his overthrow, and the consequent opening of a new social 
and political era ; such therefore was the only character that 
would cohere with the circumstances, so as to be capable 
of dramatic development. 

Source of the Historic Matter. 

More's history, as it is commonly called, was adopted by 
both Hall and Holinsshed into their Chronicles. In that 
Qoble composition, the main features of the man are digested 
and drawn together as follows : 

" Richard, the third son, was in wit and courage equal 
with either of them ; little of stature, ill-featured of limbs, 
crook-backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right, 
hard-favoured of visage ; malicious, wrathful, envious, and 
from afore his birth ever froward. Free he was called of 
dispense, and somewhat above his power liberal : with large 
gifts he gat him unsteadfast friendship, for which he was fain 
to pill and spoil in other places, and gat him steadfast hatred. 
He was close and secret, a deep dissembler, lowly of counte- 
nance, arrogant of heart ; outwardly companionable where he 
inwardly hated, not letting to kiss whom he thought to kill ; 
despiteous and cruel, not for evil will always, but oftener for 
ambition, and for the surety or increase of his estate. His 
face was small, but such, that at the first aspect a man would 
judge it to savour of malice, fraud, and deceit. When he 
stood musing, he would bite and chaw his nether lip ; as 
who said that his fierce nature in his cruel body always 
chafed, stirred, and was ever unquiet : besides that the dag- 
ger which he wore he would, when he studied, with his hand 
pluck up and down in the sheath to the midst, never drawing 
it fully out." Again the same writer notes him as being 



14 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

inordinately fond of splendid and showy dress ; thus evincing 
an intense craving to be " looked on in the world," and to 
fascinate the eyes of men. 

Shakespeare's Richard, morally speaking, is little else than 
this descriptive analysis reduced to dramatic life and expres- 
sion ; except, perhaps, that More regards him as a hypocrite 
by nature, and cruel from policy, whereas the Poet rather 
makes his cruelty innate, and his hypocrisy a politic art used 
in furtherance of his ambition. 

Growth of Richard's Character. 

In the present play, we have the working-out of the nero's 
character as already formed ; the processes of its formation 
being set forth in the preceding plays of King Henry the 
Sixth ; which is sufficient cause for adverting to a few points 
there delivered. And in this case, as in sundry others, the 
Poet suggests, at the very outset, the pivot on which the 
character mainly turns. When we first meet with Richard, 
Clifford taunts him : 

Hence, heap of wrath, foul indigested lump, 
As crooked in thy manners as thy shape ! 

And again in the same scene he is called "foul stigmatic "j 
because the stigma set on his person is both to others the 
handiest theme of reproach, and also to himself the most 
annoying ; like a huge boil on a man's face, which, for its 
unsightliness, his enemies see most, and, for its soreness, 
strike first. And Richard's personal deformity is regarded 
not only as the proper outshaping and physiognomy of a 
certain original malignity of soul, but also as aggravating that 
malignity in turn ; his shape having grown ugly because his 
spirit was bad, and his soirit growing worse because of his 



INTRODUCTION. 1 5 

Ugly shape. For his ill-looks invite reproach, and reproach 
quickens his malice ; and because men hate to look on him, 
therefore he craves all the more to be looked on ; and, for 
the gaining of his wish in this point, he covets nothing so 
much as the being able through fear to compel that which 
inclination denies. Thus experience generates in him a 
most inordinate lust of power; while the circumstantial 
impossibihty of coming at this save by crime puts him upon 
such a course of intellectual training and practice as may 
enable him to commit crimes, and still" bar off the natural 
consequences. 

Moreover his extreme vanity results in a morbid sensitive- 
ness to any signs of neglect or scorn ; and these being espe^ 
cially offensive to himself, he therefore has the greater delight 
in venting them on others : as taunts and scoffs are a form 
of power which he feels most keenly, he thence grows fond 
of using them as an apt form whereby to make his power 
felt. For even so bad men naturally covet to be wielding 
upon others the causes and instruments of their own suffer- 
ings. Hence the bitterly-sarcastic humour which Richard 
indulges so freely, and with such prodigious effect. Of 
course his sensitiveness is keenest touching the very particular 
wherein his vanity is most thwarted and wounded : he thinks 
of nothing so much as the ugHness that balks his desire, and 
resents nothing so sharply as the opinion or feeling it arrays 
against him. Accordingly his first and heaviest shots of sar- 
casm are at those who twit him on that score. So, in the 
scene where the Lancastrian Prince of Wales is killed, Rich- 
ard seems unmoved till the Prince hits him in that eye, when 
his wrath takes fire at once, and bursts out in the reply, " By 
Heaven, brat, I'll plague you for that word." 

All which explains the cause of Richard's being so prone 



l6 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

to "descant on his own deformity." His thoughts brood 
upon this, because it is the sorest spot in his condition ; and 
he becomes intent on making it the source of a dearer grati- 
fication than any it deprives him of, — the consciousness of 
such mental powers as can bear him onward and upward in 
spite of those disadvantages. Thus his sense of personal 
disgrace begets a most hateful and malignant form of pride, 
— the pride of intellectual force and mastery. Hence he 
comes to glory in the matter of his shame, to exaggerate it, 
and hang over it, as serving to approve, to set off, and mag- 
nify his strength and fertility of wit; as who would say, 
Nature indeed made me the reproach and scorn of men, 
nevertheless I have made myself their wonder and applause ; 
and though my body be such that men could not bear the 
sight of me, yet I have managed to charm their eyes. 

In this way the man's galHng wakefulness to his own 
unsightly shape festers and malignifies into a kind of self- 
pleasing virulence. Nor is this all. For, on much the same 
principle, he nurses to the highest pitch his consciousness 
also of moral deformities. So far from palliating his wicked- 
ness to himself, or skulking behind any subterfuges, or try- 
ing in any way to dodge the sense of it, he rather makes 
love to it, and exults in spreading it out and turning it round 
before his inward eye, and even stimulates his vision of it ; 
as if he were so charmed with the sight that he could not 
bear to lose any moment of it. To succeed by wrong, to 
rise by crime, to grow great by inverting the moral order of 
things, is in his view the highest proof of genius and skill. 
So he cooks both his moral and personal ugliness into food 
of intellectual pride. The worse he sees himself to be, the 
higher he stands in his own esteem, because this argues in 
him the greater superiority to other men in force of mind. 



INTRODUCTION, \*J 

This aspect of the man is indeed starthng, but I think it is 
fully borne out by his sohloquies in the Third Part of King 
Henry the Sixth ; especially that in Act iii., scene 2 : 

Well, say there is no kingdom, then, for Richard ; 

What other pleasure can the world afford ? 

I'll make my heaven in a lady's lap, 

And deck my body in gay ornaments, 

And witch sweet ladies with my words and looks. 

miserable thought ! and more unlikely 
Than to accomplish twenty golden crowns ! 
Why, Love forswore me in my mother's womb : 
And, for I should not deal in her soft laws. 

She did corrupt frail Nature with some bribe, 
To shrink mine arm up like a wither'd shrub ; 
To make an envious mountain on my back, 
Where sits deformity to mock my body ; 
To shape my legs of an unequal size ; 
To disproportion me in every part. 
Then, since this Earth affords no joy to me. 
But to command, to check, to o'erbear such 
As are of better person than myself, 
I'll make my heaven to dream upon the crown, 
And, whiles I live, t' account this world but Hell, 
Until my head, that this mis-shaped trunk bears, 
Be round impaled with a glorious crown. 
Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile ; 
And cry Content to that which grieves my heart ; 
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears, 
And frame my face to all occasions : 

1 can add colours to the chameleon ; 
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages ; 
And set the murderous Machiavel to school. 

So much for the Poet's Richard as his character is seen 
growing and taking shape. His innate malice has had fit- 
ting exercise and nurture amidst the rancours and fierceness 
of civil slaughter n)y his immunities of rank and station, his 
native strength of will has been pampered into a towering 



1 8 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

audacity of thought and purpose : the constant presence and 
Tver-shifting forms of danger have trained him to a most pro- 
Jtean hypocrisy :. he is a cQnsummate master ahke in the arts 
of dissembling and of simulation ; can counterfeit brusque^, 
ness7 meekness, innocence, humility, sorrow, anger, indigna- 
tion, artlessness, and piety ; and can play the blusterer, the 
wag, the boon companion, the penitent, the lover, the devo- 
tee, the hot partisan, the hearty friend, the cool adviser, and 
the passionate avenger; each in turn, or several of them 
together, as the occasion prompts, or the end requires. But, 
whatever sentiment he is feigning, or whatever part he is 
playing, his biting, malicious wit is ever in action, as if this 
were an original impulse with him, and the natural pastime 
of his faculties^ Many strong instances of this occur in the 
plays where he is growing, but nothing to what we have from 
the full-grown Richard in the play that bears his name. 
Any quotations in this kind would use up too much space ; 
so I must rest with noting that we have a good sample in 
Act i., scene 3, where, coming abruptly into the presence of 
the Queen and her friends, he counterfeits passion as the 
language of grieved and injured virtue ; and a still better 
one in Act iv., scene 2, where he plays off his caustic banter 
on "the deep-revolving witty Buckingham." In his pride 
of intellectual superiority, he looks with intense scorn on all 
in any sort touched with honesty ; they are game to him ; 
and his supreme delight is in mocking at such " simple gulls " 
as Clarence, Hastings, Stanley, Buckingham ; and it is by his 
dry, stinging pungency of speech that he engineers his con- 
tempt of them to the spot. Those whom it is not in his 
power or his policy to kill he loves at least to torment with 
wounding flouts. 



INTRODUCTION. I9 



Richard's Intellect. 



I have said that the moral complexion of Shakespeare's 
Richard was mainly taken from the nistorians. Intellectually, 
however, his proportions are drawn much beyond what the 
history accords him. I suppose there was very good reason 
for this. For, to have set forth such a moral physiognomy 
in dramatic form, with only his actual endowment of mind, 
would scare consist with so much of pleasure in his gifts as 
was required to countervail the horror of his crimes. Such a 
measure of depravity, stripped of the disguise which it neces- 
sarily keeps up in real life, might indeed be valuable as truth, 
but would hardly do as poetry. Which may aptly suggest 
the different laws of History and Art. Now the method of 
History is to please because it instructs ; of Art, to instruct 
because it pleases. Such, at least, is the best way I can find 
of marking the difference in question. The forms of poetry 
are relished, not as being fitted to facts, but as they fit the 
mind. Nor does this infer any defect of real instructiveness 
in Art ; for whatever pleasure springs in virtue of such cor- 
respondence with our better nature carries refreshment and 
invigoration in its touch. 

Practically, no man ever understood this thing better than 
Shakespeare. Nor, perhaps, is his understanding thereof 
better shown anywhere than in Richard. The lines of his 
wickedness as traced in history are somewhat deepened in 
the play, and its features are charged with boisterous life ; 
making, all together, a fearful picture, and such as, without 
counterpoising attractions, would be'apt to shock and revolt 
the beholder; But his intellectuality is idealized so far and 
in such sort as to season the impression of his moral deformity 
mth the largest and most various mental entertainment. If 



20 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

^ Richard is all villain, he is an all-accomplished one. And any 
painful sense of his villainy is spirited away by his thronging 
diversions of thought, his unflagging gayety of spirits, his 
prompt, piercing, versatile wit_^/ Nay, his very crimes beget 
occasion for these enchantments, while every demand seems 
in effect to replenish his stock : and thus the hateful in his 
character is so compensated by the admirable, that we are 
more than reconciled to his company, though nowise recon- 
ciled to his crimes. 
/ This point is well illustrated in Richard's wooing of Lady 
Anne, where the rays of his character are all gathered, as it 
were, into a focus. Now, whatever may have been the facts 
in the case, it is certain that Richard was at the time generally 
believed by the Lancastrians to have had a hand in killing 
both Henry the Sixth and Edward his son. It is also certain 
that within two years after their death Richard was married 
to Edward's widow, who must in all reason be supposed to 
have shared in the common belief of her party. How that 
party felt on the subject well appears in that the late King 
was revered by them as a martyr, and his tomb hallowed as 
the abode of miraculous efficacies ; for which cause Richard 
had his bones removed to a more secluded place. On 
Richard's part, the chief motive to the marriage probably 
was, that he might have a share in the immense estates of the 
lady's father, who was Richard Neville, the great Earl of War- 
wick, known in history as "the King- maker," and in Shake- 
speare as "the setter-up and puller-down of kings." For, as 
Clarence, having married the elder daughter, grasped at the 
whole ; and as Richard proposed by taking the younger to 
acquire a part ; hence arose the fierce strife between them, 
from which grew the general persuasion that Richard was 
somehow the cause of his brother's death. Perhaps, as 



INTRODUCTION. 21 

indicating the manner and spirit of the contest, it should 
be mentioned that Clarence, to thwart Richard's purpose, at 
first had the lady concealed from his pursuit several months in 
the disguise of a cook-maid ; and that, when at last the former 
saw he could not prevent the marriage, he swore that the lat- 
ter "should not part the livelihood with him." 

So that the Poet is nowise answerable for this difficulty : 
it was in the history ; and the best he could do was to fur- 
nish such a solution of it as would stand with the conditions 
of dramatic effect. Before solving the difficulty, however, 
he greatly augments it by suppression of time. Richard 
begins and finishes his courtship of the lady over the very 
coffin of the royal saint whose death she is mourning, and 
whom he is supposed to have murdered. Yet his triumph, 
such is the Poet's management, seems owing not so much 
to any special vice or defect in her as to his witchcraft of 
tongue and wit, so put in play as to disconcert all her powers 
of resistance. In a word, it is because the man is simply 
irresistible. And it should be remembered in her behalf, 
that his art succeeds equally in beguiling King Edward, 
Clarence, Hastings, Buckingham, and others. His towering 
audacity, which, springing from entire confidence in his 
powers, prevails in part by the very boldness of its attempts ; 
his flexibility and suppleness of thought, turning himself in- 
differently to all occasions, forms, and modes of address ; 
his perfect self-possession and presence of mind, never at 
a loss for a shift, nor betrayed into a misstep, nor surprised 
into a pause ; his wily dissimulation, and more wily frank- 
ness, silencing her charges by pleading guilty to them, pany- 
ing her blows by inviting them, disarming her hatred by 
owning its justice ; and his simulating deep contrition for 
past misdeeds, and the inspiration of her virtue and beauty 



22 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

as the cause of it ; — such are the parts of the sly, subtle, 
unfearing, remorseless Richard that are wrought out in his 
courtship of Lady Anne. 

The scene is indeed far from being the best, or even 
among the best, in the play ; but it combines a remarkable 
variety of characteristic points, and happily exemplifies the 
Poet's method of diverting off the offensiveness of Richard's 
acts by the entertainment of his gifts. In these respects, 
we have a repetition of the scene afterwards, when he in like 
manner triumphs, or seems to triumph, over the fears and 
scruples of Elizabeth. But indeed the Poet's work is shaped 
and ordered from the outset with a special view to the point 
in hand ; the utmost care being taken, that in our first im- 
pression of the full-grown Richard his thought- swarming head 
may have thie start of his bloody hand. Which order, by the 
way, is clean reversed in Gibber's patch-work preparation 
of the play ; the murder of the sainted Henry being there 
foisted in at the opening, so that admiration of Richard's 
intellect is forestalled by abhorrence of his wickedness. As- 
suredly it is neither wise nor right thus to tamper with the 
Poet's workmanship. In the play as he made it, the opening 
soliloquy, so starthng in its abruptness, and so crammed with 
poetry and thought, has the effect of duly pre-engaging our 
minds with the hero's active, fertile, scheming brain : our 
impression is of one unrelenting indeed, and incapable of 
fear, but who looks well before he strikes, and who is at 
least as remarkable for his powers of mind as for his abuse 
of them. Thus, in the original drama, our feelings are from 
the first properly set and toned to the scope and measure of 
the terrible as distinguished from the horrible ; the reverse 
of which takes place in the Cibberian profanation. And the 
organic law of the work plainly requires that some such in- 



INTRODUCTION. 23 

itiative be given to the penetrating and imperturbable sagacity 
which presides over all the other elements of Richard's char- 
acter, and everywhere pioneers to his purpose. 

Richard's irresistible arts of insinuation, how he can at 
once, and almost in the same breath, plant terrors and 
sweeten them away, is well shown in the brief scene with 
Ratcliff and Catesby, when he is preparing to meet the 
invading Richmond : 

Rich. Some light-foot friend post to the Duke of Norfolk : — 
Ratcliff, thyself, — or Catesby ; where is he ? 

Cate. Here, my good lord. 

Rich. Fly to the Duke. — [ 7t? RAT.] Post thou to Salisbury : 
When thou comest thither, — \_To Gate.] Dull, unmindful villain, 
Why stay'st thou here, and go'st not to the Duke ? 

Cate. First, mighty Hege, tell me your Highness' pleasure. 
What from your Grace I shall deliver to him. 

Rich. O, true, good Gatesby : bid him levy straight 
The greatest strength and power he can make. 
And meet me suddenly at Salisbury. 

Here, by his bland apology imphed in "O, true, good 
Catesby," which drops so easily that it seems to spring 
fresh from his heart, he instantly charms out the sting of 
his former words ; and we feel that the man is knit closer to 
him than ever. Yet his kingly dignity is not a whit impaired, 
nay, is even heightened, by the act, partly from his gracious- 
ness of manner, and partly from his quick art in putting the 
apology under a sort of transparent disguise. 

It should be observed that Richard, with all his inborn 
malignity, still does not properly hate those whom he kills : 
they stand between him and his purpose ; and he has 
" neither pity, love, nor fear," that he should blench or stick 
to hew. them out of the way. His malice wantons in '^^'^' 
taunts and caustic irony; he revels in teasing^ 



24 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

Others with bitter mocks and jerks ; but he is too self-repres- 
sive and too pohtic to let his malice run out in gratuitous 
cruelties. A reign of terror planted and upheld by a guil- 
lotine of malicious wit is as far as his ambition and sagacity 
will permit him to go in that direction. For Shakespeare 
could never have conceived of the English people as tolerat- 
ing even for a day a reign of terror founded on a guillo- 
tine of steel. And Richard is prudent enough to restrain 
his innate virulence from attempting so suicidal a course as 
that. But he has at the same time a certain redundant, im- 
pulsive, restless activity of nature, so that he cannot hold 
still ; and as his thought seizes with amazing quickness and 
sureness where and when and how to cut, so he is equally 
sudden and sure of hand. It is as if such an excess of life 
and energy had been rammed into his little body as to strain 
and bulge it out of shape. 

Alleged Faults of the Delineation. 

I have observed that Richard is a villain with full con- 
sciousness ; and .that, instead of endeavouring in any way to 
hide from his crimes, he rather fondles and caresses them 
as food of intellectual pride. And such is Coleridge's view. 
"Pride of intellect," says he, "is the characteristic of Rich- 
ard carried to the extent of even boasting to his own mind 
of his villainy. Shakespeare here develops, in a tone of sub- 
Hme morality, the dreadful consequences of placing the moral 
in subordination to the mere intellectual being." In this re- 
spect, Richard transcends the Poet's other crime heroes, lago 
and Edmund, who, with all their steeping in hell-venom, are 
still unable to look their hellish .purposes steadily in the face, 
and seek refuge in certain imaginary wrongs which it is the 



INTRODUCTION. 2$ 

part of manhood to revenge either on particular persons or 
on society at large. 

This feature of Richard transpires audibly, and with not 
a little of special emphasis, in his soliloquies, both those in 
the Third Part of King Henry the Sixth, and also those in 
the present play. It has been quesnbned, and is indeed 
fairly questionable, whether the delineation in this point 
does not overpass the natural limits of human wickedness. 
One of the authors of Guesses at Truth thinks the Poet 
" has somewhat exaggerated the diabohcal element " in the 
speeches in question. " If," says he, "we compare the way 
in which lago's plot is first sown, and springs up, and grad- 
ually grows and ripens in his brain, with Richard's down- 
right enunciation of his projected series of crimes from the 
first, we may discern the contrast between the youth and 
the mature manhood of the mightiest intellect that ever 
lived upon Earth." Again, after noting how Richard's sense 
of personal deformity acts as an irritant of his innate malice, 
the writer proceeds thus : " I cannot but think that Shake- 
speare would have made a somewhat different use even of 
this motive, if he had rewritten the play in ^the maturity of 
his intellect. Would not Richard then, like Edmund and 
lago, have palliated and excused his crimes to himself, and 
sophisticated and played tricks with his conscience?" And 
the' writer affirms withal, that "it is as contrary to nature 
for a man to anatomize his heart and soul thus, as it would 
be to make him dissect his own body." 

Metaphors are rather ticklish things to reason with ; and 
the sentence last quoted goes somewhat to discredit the 
writer's criticism in certain points which I am apt to think 
well taken. For in fact men often do practise a degree of 
self-anatomy in their mental and moral parts, such as were 



26 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

obviously impossible as regards their bodily structure. Now 
Richard as drawn by the Poet in action no less than in 
speech has a dare-devil intellectuality, in the strength of 
which^ for aught I can see, he might inspect and scrutinize 
himself as minutely and as boldly as he would another person, 
or as another person would him. And why might he not, 
from the same cause, grow and harden into a habit of facing 
his blackest purposes as unflinchingly as he does his unsightly 
person, and even of taking pleasure in over-painting their 
wickedness to himself, in order at once to stimulate and to 
gratify his lust of the brain? And does not his most dis- 
tinctive feature, as compared with lago and Edmund, stand 
mainly in this, that intellectual pride is in a more exclusive 
manner the constituent of his character? The critic, be it 
observed, specially faults certain of Richard's soliloquies, as 
if there were something exceptionally wrong in these ; and 
the question with me is, whether these are not in perfect 
keeping with his character as transpiring in action through- 
out the play. For it is manifest that, in what he does, no 
less than in what he there says, his hypocrisy is without the 
least shade of self-delusion. The most constant, the most 
versatile, the most perfect of actors, he is never a whit taken 
in by his own acting : he has, in consummation, the art to 
conceal his art from others ; and because this is what he 
chiefly glories in, therefore he takes care that it may not be- 
come in any degree a secret to himself. Moral obliquity so 
played as to pass for moral rectitude is to him the test and 
measure of intellectual strength and dexterity; for which 
cause he delights not only to practise it, but also to contem- 
plate himself while practising it, and even while designing 
it. And herein he differs from all real-life actors, where it 
is hardly possible but that hypocrisy and self-deceit should 



INTRODUCTION. 2/ 

slide into each other : hence it is that hypocrites are so apt 
to end by turning fanatics, and vice versa, as common ob- 
servation testifies. 

But this is making Richard out an improbable character, 
— a character running to a height of guilt where no man 
could sustain himself in being ? Perhaps so. And my pur- 
pose is not so much to vindicate the sohloquies as to suggest 
whether the charge raised from them will not hold equally 
against the whole delineation. If I am right in thinking 
that the soliloquies strictly cohere with his general action, 
it follows that both are in fault, or neither : so that, if the 
Poet be there in error, he is at least consistently so. In- 
stead, therefore, of rejecting the forecited criticism, I should 
rather incline to extend it over the substance and body of 
the play ; in the very conception of which we seem to have 
somewhat of the mistake, so incident to youthful genius, of 
seeking for excellence rather by transcending Nature than 
by closing with her heartily, and going smoothly along with 
her. 

Richard's Abnormal Individuality. 

It is plain that such a man as Richard must either cease 
to be himself, or else must be himself alone. Isolation, vir- 
tual or actjjal, is his vital air, the breath, the necessary con- 
dition of his life. One of his character, without his position, 
would have to find solitude ; Richard, by his position, has 
the alternative of creating it : the former must be where 
none others are ; the latter, where all others are in effect as 
if they were not. For society is in its nature a complexion 
of mutualities, and every rule pertaining to it works both 
ways V it is a partnership of individualities, some of them sub- 
ordinate indeed, and some superior ; but yet in such sort as 



28 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

to presuppose a net-work of ties running and recurring from 
each to each ; so that no one can urge a right without infer- 
ring a duty, nor claim a bond without owning himself bound. 
But Richard's individuality can abide no partner, either as 
equal, or as second, or in any other degree. There is no 
sharing any thing with him, in however unequal portions ; 
no acting with him, as original, self-moving agents, but only 
from him, as the objects and passive recipients of his activity. 
Such is the form and scope of his individuality, that other 
men's cannot stand in subordination to it, but must either 
crush it, or fly from it, or be absorbed into it; and the 
moment any one goes to acting otherwise than as a limb of 
his person, or an organ of his will, there is a virtual declara- 
tion of war between them, and the issue must hang on a trial 
of strength or of stratagem. 

Hence there is, properly speaking, no interaction between 
Richard and the other persons of the drama. He is the all- 
in-all of the scene. And herein is this play chiefly distin- 
guished from the others, and certainly, as a work of art, not 
distinguished for the better, that the entire action, in all its 
parts and stages, so far at least as it has any human origin 
and purpose, both springs from the hero as its source, and 
determines in him as its end. So that the drama is not so 
much a composition of co-operative characters, mutually de- 
veloping and developed, as the prolonged yet hurried out- 
come of a single character, to which' the other persons serve 
but as exponents and conductors ; as if he were a volume of 
electricity disclosing himself by means of others, and quench- 
ing their active powers in the very process of doing so. The 
most considerable exception to this is Queen Margaret, 
whose individuahty shoulders itself in face to face with Rich- 
ard's ; her passionate impulse wrestling evenly with his 



INTRODUCTION. 29 

deliberate purpose, and her ferocious temper being provoked 
to larger and hotter eruptions by all attempts at restraint or 
intimidation. This, to be sure, is partly because she can do 
nothing ; while at the same time her tongue is all the more 
eager and powerful to blast, forasmuch as she has no hands 
to strike. 

The preceding remarks may go far to explain the great 
and lasting popularity of this play on the stage. There 
being no one to share with the hero in the action and inter- 
est of the piece, this renders it all the better for theatrical 
starring ; for which cause most of the great actors have nat- 
urally been fond of appearing in it, and play-goers of seeing 
them in it. Besides, the hero, as before remarked, is himself 
essentially an actor, though an actor of many parts, sometimes 
acting one of them after another, and sometimes several of 
them together : and the fact that his character is much, of it 
assumed, and carried through as a matter of art, probably 
makes it somewhat easier for another to assume. At all 
events, the difficulty, one would suppose, must be much less 
in proportion to the stage-effect than in reproducing the deep 
tragic passions of Lear and Othello, as these burst up from 
the original founts of nature. 

Workings of his Conscience. 

Richard, however, is not all hypocrite : his courage and 
his self-control at least are genuine ; nor is there any thing 
false or counterfeit in his acting of these. And his strength 
of will is exerted even more in repressing his own nature 
than in oppressing others. Here it is, perhaps, that we 
have the most admirable feature of the delineation. Such 
a vigour of self-com_mand, the central force of all great char- 



$0 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

acters, seldom fails to captivate the judgment, or to inspire 
something like respect ; and, when carried to such a height 
as in Richard, it naturally touches common people with 
wonder and awe, as being wellnigh superhuman. In this 
respect, he strongly resembles Lady Macbeth, that he does 
absolute violence to his nature in outwrestling the powers 
of conscience. In his waking moments, he never betrays, 
except in one instance, any sense of guilt, any pangs of 
remorse ; insomuch that he seems to have a hole in his 
head, where the moral faculties ought to be. But such a 
hole can nowise stand with judgment and true sagacity, 
which Richard certainly has in a high degree. And it is 
very much to the point that, as in Lady Macbeth, his 
strength of will is evidently overstrained in keeping down 
the insurgent moral forces of his being. But this part of 
his nature asserts itself in his sleep, when his powers of self- 
repression are suspended : then his involuntary forces rise 
in insurrection against the despotism of his voluntary. In 
his speech to the army near the close, he describes con- 
science as " a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep 
the strong in awe " ; and this well shows how hard he strives 
to hide from others, and even from himself, the workings of 
that deity in his breast : but the horrid dreams which infest 
his pillow and plague his slumbers, and which are disclosed 
to us by Lady Anne, are a conclusive record of the torturing 
thoughts that have long been rending and harrowing his 
inner man in his active career, and of the extreme violence 
his nature has suffered from the tyranny of will in repressing 
all outward signs of the work going on within. That his 
conscience in sleep should thus rouse itself and act the fury 
in his soul, to avenge the wrongs of his terrible self-despotism 
when awake, — this it is that, more than any thing else, vin- 



INTRODUCTION. 3 1 

dicates his partnership in humanity, and keeps him within 
the circle of our human sympathies. 

Richard's inexorable tenacity of purpose and his overbear- 
ing self-mastery have their strongest display in the catastro- 
phe. He cannot indeed prolong his Hfe ; but he makes his 
death serve in the highest degree the end for which he has 
lived j dying in a perfect transport of heroism, insomuch 
that we may truly say, " nothing in his life became him like 
the leaving it." Nay, he may even be said to compel his 
own death, when a higher power than man's has cut off 
all other means of honour and triumph. Herein, too, the 
Poet followed the history : but in the prerogatives of his art 
he found out a way, which history knows not of, to satisfy 
the moral feelings ; representing the hero as in Hands that 
can well afford to let him defy all the powers of human 
avengement. Inaccessible to earthly strokes, or accessible 
to them only in a way that adds to his earthly honour, yet 
this dreadful impunity is recompensed in the agonies of an 
embosomed hell ; and our moral nature reaps a stern satis- 
faction in the retributions which are rendered vocal and 
articulate by the ghosts that are made to haunt his sleeping 
moments. For even so the Almighty sometimes chooses, 
apparently, to vindicate His law by taking the punishment 
directly and exclusively into His own hands. And, surely. 
His vengeance is never so awful as when subordinate minis- 
tries are thus dispensed with. 

I here refer, of course, to what takes place the night 
before the battle of Bosworth-field. The matter was evi- 
dently suggested by the history, which gives it thus : " The 
fame went, that he had the same night a terrible dream ; 
for it seemed to him, being asleep, that he did see divers 
images like terrible devils, which pulled and haled him, not 



32 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

suffering him to take any rest. The which strange vision 
not so suddenly strake his heart with fear, but it stuffed his 
head with many busy and dreadful imaginations." The 
effect of this vision is best told by Richard himself, when 
he starts from his couch in an ecstasy of fright : 

Give me another horse ! bind up my wounds ! — 
Have mercy, Jesu ! — Soft ! I did but dream. 

coward conscience, how dost thou afiElict me ! — 
The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight. 
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh. 
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, 
And every tongue brings in a several tale. 

And every tale condemns me for a villain. 

1 shall despair. There is no creature loves me ; 
And, if I die, no soul shall pity me. 

Rat. {Entermgl\ My lord, — 

Rick. Who's there ? 

Rat. My lord, 'tis I. The early village-cock 
Hath twice done salutation to the morn ; 
Your friends are up, and buckle on their armour. 

Rich. O Ratchff, I have dream'd a fearful dream ! 
What thinkest thou, will our friends prove all true ? 

Rat. No doubt, my lord. 

Rich. O Ratcliff, I fear, I fear ! 

Methought the souls of all that I had murder'd 
Came to my tent ; and every one did threat 
To-morrow's vengeance on the head of Richard. 

Rat. Nay, good my lord, be not afraid of shadows. 

Rich. By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night 
Have struck more terror to the heart of Richard 
Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers 
Arm^d in proof and led by shallow Richmond. 

Thus the still small voice, which Richard so tyrannically 
strangles while consciousness is vigilant, takes its turn of 
tyranny with him when his other forces are in abeyance. 
And I suppose his intense, feverish activity of mind and 
body when awake springs in part from the gnawings of the 



INTRODUCTION. 33 

worm : he endeavours, or rather is impelled, to stifle or lose 
the sense of guilt in a high-^pressure stress and excitement 
of thought and work. For so the smothered pangs of re- 
morse often act as potent stimulants or irritants of the intel- 
lect and will ; the hell within burning the fiercer for being 
repressed, and so heating the brain into restless, convulsive 
activity. In this way, the very conscience of crime may 
have the effect of plunging the subject into further crimes : 
Remorse 

Works in his guilty hopes and selfish fears, 
And, while she scares him, goads him to his fate. 

And it is through the secret working of this power that 
Henry's prophecy touching Richmond, and also the fortune- 
teller's prediction which made the hero start on seeing the 
castle at Exeter, and hearing it called Rougemont, stick so 
fast in his memory, and sit so heavy on his soul through 
the closing struggle. As Gervinus says, "he who in his 
realistic free-thinking was fain to deny all higher powers, 
and by his hypocrisy to deceive even Heaven itself, suc- 
cumbs at last to their inevitable stroke." 

Character of Margaret. 

The introduction of Margaret in this play has no formal 
warrant in history. After the battle of Tewksbury, May, 
147 1, she was confined in the Tower till 1475, when, being 
ransomed by her father, she went into France, and died 
there in 1482. So that the part she takes in these scenes 
is, throughout, a dramatic fiction. And a very judicious 
piece of fiction it is too. Nor is it without a basis of truth ; 
for, thoqgh absent in person, she was notwithstanding pres- 
ent in spirit, and in the memory of her voice, which seemed 



34 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

to be still ringing in the ears of both friends and foes. Her 
character, too, like Richard's, has its growth and shaping in 
the preceding plays of King Heniy the Sixth ; which makes 
it needful to revert to certain matters there presented. 

Henry the Fifth had made great conquests in France, and 
died in 1422, leaving the crown to his infant son, afterwards 
Henry the Sixth, who at the age of twenty- two was married 
to Margaret of Anjou. During his nonage, what with the 
rising spirit of France, and what with the fierce feuds that 
sprang up amongst the English leaders, the provinces in 
France were recovered one after another to the French 
crown. The English people were vastly proud of those 
conquests, and were stung almost to madness at the loss 
of them. Hence grew the long series of civil v/ars known 
as "the Wars of the Roses." The great and fiery spirit of 
Margaret was present and active all through that conflict. 
The irritations caused by the losses in France are repre- 
sented by Shakespeare as so many eggs of discord in the 
nest of English life, and Margaret as the hot-breasted fury 
that hatched them into effect ; her haughty, vindictive tem- 
per, her indomitable energy, and fire-spouting tongue fitting 
her to be, as indeed she was, a constant provoker and stirrer- 
up of hatreds and strifes. 

Much has been said by one critic and another about the 
Poet's Lancastrian prejudices as manifested in this series of 
plays. One may well be curious to know whether those pre- 
judices are to be held responsible for the portrait he gives of 
Margaret, wherein we have, so to speak, an abbreviature and 
compendium of nearly all the worst vices of her time. The 
character, however lifelike and striking in its effect, is coloured 
much beyond what sober history warrants : though some of 
the -main features are not without a basis of fact, still the com- 



INTRODUCTION. 35 

position and expression as a whole has hardly enough of his- 
torical truth to render it a caricature. A bold, ferocious, and 
tempestuous woman, void alike of dehcacy, of dignity, and 
of discretion, all the bad passions out of which might be 
engendered the madness of civil war seem to flock and hover 
about her footsteps. Her speech and action, however, impart 
a wonderful vigour and lustihood to the scenes wherein she 
moves j and perhaps it was only by exaggerating her, or some 
other person, into a sort of representative character, that the 
springs and processes of that long national bear-fight could be 
developed in a poetical or dramatic form. Her penetrating 
intellect and unrestrainable volubihty discourse forth the mo- 
tives and principles of the combantant factions ; while in her 
remorseless impiety and revengeful ferocity is impersonated, 
as it were, the very genius and spirit of the terrible conflict. 
So that we may regard her as, in some sort, an ideal con- 
centration of that murderous ecstasy which seized upon the 
nation. And it should be observed withal, that popular 
tradition, sprung from the reports of her enemies, and cher- 
ished by patriotic feeling, had greatly overdrawn the wicked- 
ness of Margaret, to the end, apparently, that it might have 
something foreign whereon to father the evils resulting from 
her husband's weakness and the moral distemper of the 
times. 

The dramatic character of Margaret, whether as transpir- 
ing at Court or in the field, is sustained at the same high 
pitch through all the plays wherein she figures. Afflictions 
do but open in her breast new founts of imbitterment : her 
speech is ever teeming with the sharp answer that engenders 
wrath ; and out of every wound issues the virulence that is 
sure tp provoke another blow. If any one thinks that her 
ferocity is strained up to a pitch incompatible with her sex. 



36 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

and unnecessary for the occasion ; perhaps it will be deemed 
/ a sufficient answer, that the spirit of such a war could scarce 
; be dramatically conveyed without the presence of a fury, 
' and that the Furies have always been represented as females. 
I will add a few words touching the reason which seems 
to have justified the Poet in carrying on the part of Mar- 
garet, against the literal truth of history, into the scenes of 
J^i'ng Richard the Third. 

Now it is considerable that in the earlier plays Richard 
is made several years older than he really was. Old enough, 
however, he was in fact, to have the spirit of the times thor- 
oughly transfused into his character. There can be no doubt 
that the pungent seasoning sprinkled in here and there from 
the bad heart and busy brain of the precocious Richard is a 
material addition to those plays in an artistic point of view. 
But there was, I think, good cause in the substantial truth 
of things why Richard should be there just as he is. In 
point of moral history, it was but right to forecast the style 
of character which the proceedings then on foot were likely 
to generate and hand down to after-times. And as in the 
earlier plays Richard supplies such a forecast, so in the later 
play Margaret supplies a corresponding retrospect. She was 
continued on the scene, to the end, apparently, that the par- 
ties might have a terrible present remembrancer of their 
former deeds ; just as the manhood of Richard had been 
anticipated for the purpose, as would seem, of forecasting the 
final issues from the earlier stages of that multitudinous trag- 
edy. So that there appears to be some reason in the ways 
of Providence, as well as in the laws of Art, why Margaret 
should still be kept in presence, as the fitting counterpart 
of that terrible man, — so merry-hearted, subtle-witted, and 
bloody-handed, whose mental efficacy turns perjury, murder, 



INTRODUCTION. 37 

and what is worse, if aught worse there be, to poetry,— as 
he grows on from youth to manhood, and from manhood to 
his end, at once the offspring and the avenger of civil 
butchery. 

As for the part which Margaret takes in the scenes of King 
Richard the Third, I have but Httle to add respecting it. 
Her condition is vastly different indeed from what it was in 
the earher plays, but her character remains the same. She 
is here stripped of arms and instruments, so that her thoughts 
can no longer work out in acts. But, for this very cause, her 
Amazonian energies concentrate themselves so much the 
more in her speech ; and her eloquence, while^ retaining all 
its strength and fluency, burns the deeper, forasmuch as it is 
the only organ of her mind that she has left. In brief, she 
is still the same high-grown, wide -branching tree, now ren- 
dered leafless indeed, and therefore all the fitter for the 
blasts of heaven to howl and whistle through ! Long sufler- 
ing has deepened her fierceness into sublimity. At once 
vindictive and broken-hearted, her part runs into a most 
impressive blending of the terrible and the pathetic. Wal- 
pole, in his Historic Doubts, remarks that in this play the 
Poet " seems to deduce the woes of the House of York from 
the curses which Queen Margaret had vented against them." 
Might it not as well be said that her woes are deduced from 
the curse formerly laid upon her by the Duke of York? I 
can perceive no deduction in either case : each seems but 
to have a foresight of future woe to the other, as the proper 
consequence of past or present crimes. The truth is, Mar- 
garet's curses do but proclaim those moral retributions of 
which God is the author, and Nature His minister ; and per- 
haps the only way her former character could be carried on 
into these scenes was by making her seek indemnity for hef 



38 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

woes in ringing changes upon the woes of others. She is a 
sort of wailing or ululating chorus to the thick-thronging 
butcheries and agonies that wind their course through the 
play. A great, brave, fearful woman indeed, made sacred 
by all the anguishes that a wife and a mother can know ! 

Minor Characters. 

Of the other characters in this play probably little need be 
said. — Hastings and Buckingham neither get nor deserve 
any pity from us. They have done all they could to nurse 
and prepare the human_tiger that finally hunts them to death. 
Their thorough steeping in the wickedness of the times, and 
their reckless participation, either by act or by sympathy in 
Richard's slaughters, mark them out as worthy victims when, 
from motives no better than he is actuated by, they under- 
take to block the course which they have themselves exulted 
to see that living roll of hell-fire pursue. 

Stanley gauges the hero rightly from the first, penetrates 
his closest designs, and then adroitly fathers the results of 
his own insight upon some current superstition of omens or 
dreams. Without sharing in any of Richard's crimes or 
defiling his hands at all with blood, he turns Richard's 
weapons against him, and fairly beats him at his own game. 
His relationship to Richmond naturally marks him out for 
suspicion : he forecasts this from afar, and with a kind of 
honest knavery so shapes his course that he can easily parry 
or dodge or quiet the suspicion when it comes. With clean 
purposes, he dissembles them as completely as Richard does 
his foul ones. He is in secret correspondence with Rich- 
mond all along ; yet carries it so, that no wind thereof gets 
abroad. His art takes on the garb of perfect frankness, 



INTRODUCTION. 39 

candour, and simplicity, which is art indeed. He counsels 
Dorset to speed his flight to Richmond, and gives him let- 
ters ; then goes straight to Richard, and tells him Dorset 
has fled. He is also the first to inform Richard that '' Rich- 
mond is on the seas," and that " he makes for England, here 
to claim the crown." By this timely speaking of what is 
true, but what he would naturally be least expected to dis- 
close, he makes a passage for the full-grown deceit which 
he is presently forced to use. But he justly holds it a work 
of honesty to deceive such an arch-deceiver in such a cause. 
And his patriotism and rectitude of purpose are amply 
shown in that, when the crisis comes, he stakes what is 
dearest in the world to him, for the deliverance of his coun- 
try from the butchering tyrant. This was a good beginning 
for the noble and illustrious House of Stanley, which has, I 
believe, in all ages since stood true alike to loyalty and 
liberty. 

The parts of Lady Anne, of Elizabeth, the Duchess of 
York, and the two young Princes, are skilfully managed so 
as to diversify and relieve what would else be a prolonged 
monotony of atrocious wickedness and intellectual circus- 
riding. I say relieve, for the change from the society of 
such consummate hypocrisies and villainies to that of heart- 
rending sorrow is a relief : nay, it is almost a positive happi- 
ness thus to escape now and then from the doers of wrong, 
and breathe awhile with the sufferers of wrong. 

Lady Anne's seeming levity in yielding to the serpent 
flatteries of the wooing homicide is readily forgiven in th^ 
sore burden of grief which it entails upon her, in her subdued 
gentleness to other destined victims, and in the sad resigna- 
tion with which she forecasts the bitterness of her brief future. 



40 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

Her nature is felt to be all too soft to stand against the crafty 
and merciless tormentor into whose hand she has given 
herself; and she seems 

Like a poor bird entangled in a snare, 

Whose heart still flutters, though her wings forbear 

To stir in useless struggle. 

Elizabeth is prudent, motherly, and pitiful, withal by no 
means lacking in strength and spirit. Stanley, Margaret, 
and the Duchess excepted, she is the only person in the 
play who reads correctly the hero's character. From the 
slaughter of her kindred at Pomfret, her instinctive feminine 
sagacity gathers at once the whole scheme of what is coming, 
and anticipates the utter ruin of her House. But she is so 
benetted round with intriguing arts, and, what is still worse, 
so beset with the friendly assurances of minds less penetrat- 
ing than hers, that all her defences prove of no avail in the 
chief point. It was both wise and kind in the Poet to 
represent her voice as so untuned to the language of im- 
precation, that she has to call on one so eloquent in curses 
as Margaret to do her cursing for her. In the scene where 
Richard wooes so persistently for her daughter's hand, it 
appears something uncertain whether she is really beguiled 
and won by his wizard rhetoric, or whether she only tem- 
porizes, and feigns a reluctant acquiescence, and so at last 
fairly outwits him. Most critics, I believe, have taken the 
former view ; but I am far from seeing it so : for her daugh- 
ter's hand is firmly pledged to Richmond already, and she 
is in the whole secret of the plot for seating him on the 
throne. So I take it as an instance of that profound yet 
innocent and almost unconscious guile which women are 
apt to use in defence of those they love, and which so often 



INTRODUCTION. 4I 

proves an overmatch for all the resources of deliberate 
craft. 

The two Princes are charmingly discriminated, and the 
delineation of them, though compressed into a few brief 
speeches, is an exquisite piece of work. The elder is in- 
quisitive, thoughtful, cautious in his words, hardly knowing 
whether to fear his uncle or not, and, with a fine instinctive 
tact, veiUng his doubt under a, pregnant equivoque. The 
younger is pert, precocious, and clever, and prattles out his 
keen childish wit, in perfect freedom from apprehension, 
and quite innocent of the stings it carries. Their guileless 
intelligence and sweet trustfulness of disposition make a cap- 
ital foil to the Satanic subtlety and virulent intellectuality of 
Richard. 

General Remarks. 

This drama has, in my judgment, many and great faults, 
some of which I nave noted already. Certain scenes and 
passages excepted, the workmanship in all its parts, in lan- 
guage, structure of the verse, and quality of tone, is greatly 
below what we find in the Poet's later plays. In many places, 
there is an overstudied roundness of diction and regularity of 
movement ; therewithal the persons often deliver themselves 
too much in the style of set speeches, and rather as authors 
striving for effect than as men and women stirred by the real 
passions and interests of life ; there is at times an artificial 
and bookish tang in the dialogue, and many strains of elabo- 
rate jingle made by using the same word in different senses : 
all smacking as if the Poet wrote more from what he had 
read in books, or heard at the theatre, than from what his 
most prying, quick, and apprehensive ear had caught of the 
unwritten drama of actual and possible men. In illustration 



42 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

of the point, I may aptly refer to the hero's soliloquy when 
he starts so wildly from his "fearful dream " ; some parts of 
which are in or near the Poet's best style, others in his worst 
The good parts I have quoted already, and those are indeed 
good enough : the rest is made up of forced conceits and 
affectations, such as Nature utterly refuses to own ; albeit 
the plays and novels of that time were generally full of them. 
Here is a brief specimen : 

What do I fear ? myself? there's none else by : 

Richard loves Richard ; that is, I am I, 

Is there a murderer here ? No ; — yes, I am : 

Then fly. What, from myself ? Great reason why, — 

Lest I revenge myself upon myself. 

Alack, I love myself. Wherefore ? for any good 

That I myself have done unto myself ? 

O, no ! alas, I rather hate myself 

For hateful deeds committed by myself. 

It is hard to beHeve that Shakespeare could have written this 
at any time of his hfe, or that the speaker was meant to be 
in earnest in twisting such riddles ; but he was. Some have 
indeed claimed to see a reason for the thing in the speaker's 
state of mind ; but this view is, to my thinking, quite upset 
by the better parts of the same speech. 

On the whole, then, I should say that in this piece the 
author is struggling and vibrating between the native impulses 
of his genius and the force of custom and example ; or like 
one just passing out of youth into manhood, and fluctuating 
between the two. For even so, in some of his plays, the 
Poet seems going more by fashion than by inspiration, or con- 
sulting now what is within him, now what is around him. And 
I think it stands to reason, that he could not have reached 
his own high ways of art without first practising in the ways 
aheady open and approved. Of course, as experience grad- 



INTRODUCTION. 43 

ually developed his native strength, and at the same time 
taught him what this was sufficient for, he would naturally 
throw aside more and more the aids of custom and precedent ; 
since these would come to be felt as incumbrances in pro- 
portion as he grew able to do better without them. 

And this would naturally hold much more in his efforts 
at tragedy than at comedy. For the elements of comedy, 
besides being more light and wieldy in themselves, had 
been playing freely about his boyhood, and mingling in his 
earliest observation of human life and character : so that 
here he would be apt to cast himself more quickly and 
unreservedly upon Nature, as he had been used to meet and 
converse with her. Tragedy, on the other hand, must in all 
reason have been to him a much more artificial thing ; and 
he would needs require both a larger measure and a stronger 
faculty of observation and experience, before he could find 
the elements of it in Nature, and become able to digest and 
modulate them into the many- toned yet severe and nicely- 
balanced harmony of Dramatic Art. Is it not clear, then, 
that in proportion as he lacked the power to grasp and wield 
the forces of tragedy, in his first efforts in that kind, he 
would be mainly governed by what stood before him, and 
that the adventitious helps and influences of the time would 
be prominently reproduced in his work? Therefore it is, no 
doubt, that his earlier comedies are so much more Shake- 
spearian in style and spirit and characterization than his 
tragedies of the same period. For can it be questioned that 
such a man so circumstanced would both find himself and 
make others find him sooner in comedy than in tragedy ? 
At all events, it is certain that his earlier labours in both 
kinds were, to a great extent, specimens of imitation ; though, 
indeed, of imitation surpassing its models. It seems in fact 



44 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

to have been through the process of imitation that his char- 
acter and idiom got worked out into free and self-reliant 
action. 

So that, as I have elsewhere remarked, it is a great mis- 
take to regard Shakespeare as one with whom the ordinary 
laws and methods of intellectual growth and virtue had little 
or nothing to do. He must indeed have been a prodigious 
infant ; yet an infant he unquestionably was ; and had to 
proceed by the usual paths from infancy to manhood, how- 
ever unusual may have been the ease and speed of his 
passage. Dowered perhaps with such a portion of genius 
as hath fallen to no other mortal, still his powers had to 
struggle through the common infirmities and incumbrances 
of our nature. For, assuredly, his mighty mind was not 
born full-grown and ready-furnished for the course and 
service of Truth, but had to creep, totter, and prattle ; 
much study, observation, experience, in a word, a long, 
severe tentative process being required to insinew and dis- 
cipline and regulate his genius into power. 



KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 



PERSONS REPRESENTED. 



'-\ 



his Brothers. 



King Edward the Fourth. 
EDWARD.PrinceofWales. K jgS^^g 
Richard, Duke of York, i 
Duke of Clarence 
Duke of Gloster, 
A young Son of Clarence. 
Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. 
Bourchier, Primate of England. 
Rotherham, Archbishop of York. 
John Morton, Bishop of Ely. 
Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. 
John Howard, Duke of Norfolk. 
Thomas, his Son, Earl of Surrey. 
WOODVILLE, Earl Rivers. 
Marquess of Dorset, 1 Sons of the 
Richard Lord Grey, ) Queen. 
John de Vere, Earl of Oxford. 
William Lord Hastings. 
Thomas Lord Stanley. 



Francis Lord I^ovel. 

Sir Thomas Vaughan. 

Sir Richard Ratcliff. 

Sir William Catesby. 

Sir James Tyrrel. 

Sir William Brandon. 

Sir James Blunt. 

Sir Walter Herbert. 

Sir Robert Brakenbury. 

Christopher Urswick, a Priest 

Another Priest. 

Lord Mayor of London. 

Sheriff of Wiltshire. 



Elizabeth, Queen of Edward IV. 
Margaret, Widow of Henry VL 
Cecily, Duchess of York. 
Lady Anne. 
A young Daughter of Clarence. 

Lords and other Attendants ; two Gentlemen, a Pursuivant, Scrivener, Citi- 
zens, Murderers, Messengers, Ghosts, Soldiers, &c. 



Scene. — England. 



ACT I. 

Scene I. — London. A Street. 
Enter Gloster. 

Glos. Now is the Winter of our discontent 
Made glorious Summer by this sun,i of York ; 

1 The cognizance of Edward IV. was a sun, in memory of the three suns 



46 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACl 1. 

And all the clouds that lour'd upon our House 

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. 

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths ; 

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments ; 

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings, 

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.^ 

Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front ; 

And now — instead of mounting barbed ^ steeds 

To fright the souls of fearful "* adversaries — 

He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber 

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. 

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, 

Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass ; 

I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty 

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph ; 

I, that am ciirtail'd of this fair proportion,^ 

Cheated of feature by dissembhng Nature,^ 

tvhich are said to have appeared at the battle he gained over the Lancas. 
trians at Mortimer's Cross. See Third Part of Henry the Sixth, ii. i. 

2 Measure was the name of a dance. See Much Ado, page 42, note 5. 

3 Barbed is caparisoned or clothed in the trappings of war. The word 
is properly barded, from equus bardatus. 

4 Fearful was, as it still is, used in the two opposite senses of terrible and 
timorous. Here it probably has the former. 

5 Proportion for form, shape, or personal aspect. Repeatedly so. " This 
fair proportion " may refer to what has just been spoken of as " love's 
majesty." But this is probably here used indefinitely, and with something 
of a sneer. The demonstrative pronouns were, and still are, often used 
thus. So in 2 Henry IV., \. 2 : "This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of 
lethargy." 

6 Feature in the sense oi form ox figure, and referring to the person in 
general. So in More's description of Richard : " Little of stature, ill-featured 
of limbs, crook-backed." — Dissembling, here, is sometimes explained to 
mean, not deceiving, but putting together or assembling things not semblable, 
as a brave mind and a deformed body. It may be so ; but the word cheated 
seems to make rather strongly against this explanation. 



SCENE I. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 47 

Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time 

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, 

And that so lamely and unfashionable, 

That dogs bark at me as I halt by them ; — 

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, 

Have no delight to pass away the time. 

Unless to spy my shadow in the sun, 

And descant on mine own deformity : 

And therefore — since I cannot prove a lover, 

To entertain these fair well-spoken days ■■ — 

I am determined to prove a villain. 

And hate the idle pleasures of these days. 

Plots have I laid, inductions ^ dangerous, 

By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams, 

To set my brother Clarence and the King 

In deadly hate the one against the other : 

And, if King Edward be as true and just 

As I am subtle, false, and treacherous, 

This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,^ 

About a prophecy, which says that G 

Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be. 

Dive, thoughts, down to my soul : here Clarence comes. — 

Enter Clarence, guarded, and Brakenbury. 

Brother, good day : what means this armed guard 
That waits upon your Grace ? 

Clar. His Majesty, 



7 Inductions are beginnings, preparations ; things that draw on or induce 
events. Shakespeare has the word just so in two other places. 

8 To mew up was a term in falconry ; hawks being shut up or confined in 
a mew during the season of moulting. 



48 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT I. 

Tendering ^ my person's safety, hath appointed 
This conduct ^^ to convey me to the Tower. 

Glos. Upon what cause ? 

Clar. Because my name is George. 

Glos. Alack, my lord, that fault is none of yours ; 
He should, for that, commit your godfathers : 
O, belike his Majesty hath some intent 
That you shall be new-christeii'd in the Tower. 
But what's the matter, Clarence ? may I know ? 

Clar. Yea, Richard, when I know ; for I protest 
As yet I do not : but, as I can learn. 
He hearkens after prophecies and dreams ; 
And from the cross-row ^^ plucks the letter G, 
And says a wizard told him that by G 
His issue disinherited should be ; 
And, for 12 my name of George begins with G, 
It follows in his thought that I am he. 
These, as I learn, and such-like toys ^^ as these. 
Have moved his Highness to commit me now. 

Glos. Why, this it is, when men are ruled by women : 
'Tis not the King that sends you to the Tower ; 
My Lady Grey his wife, Clarence, 'tis she 



9 To tender a thing is to be careful of it, to have a tender regard fox it, to 
hold it dear. See Hamlet, page 73, note 27. 

10 Conduct for conductor, or escort. See Twelfth Night, p. 105, note 20. 

11 Cross-row is an abbreviation of Christ-cross-row, and means the alpha- 
bet, which is said to have been so called, either because a cross was placed 
before it, or because it was written in the form of a cross, to be used as a 
sort of charm. 

12 For is here equivalent to because ; a frequent usage. 

18 Toys for whims, fancies, ox freaks of imagination. So in Hamlet, i. 4 : 
" The very place puts toys of desperation into every brain that looks so 
many fathoms to the sea," &c. 



SCENE I. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 49 

That tempers ^^ him to this extremity. 

Was it not she, and that good man of worship, 

Antony Woodeville,!^ her brother there, 

That made him send Lord Hastings to the Tower, 

From whence this present day he is deliver'd? 

We are not safe, Clarence ; we are not safe. 

C/ar. By Heaven, I think there is no man secure 
But the Queen's kindred, and night-walking heralds 
That trudge betwixt the King and Mistress Shore. 
Heard ye not what an humble suppliant 
Lord Hastings was to her for his delivery? 

G/os. Humbly complaining to her Deity 
Got my Lord Chamberlain his liberty. 
I'll tell you what ; I think it is our way, 
If we will keep in favour with the King, 
To be her men, and wear her livery : 
The jealous o'erworn widow and herself,^® 
Since that our brother dubb'd them gentlewomen, 
Are mighty gossips in this monarchy. 

Brak. Beseech your Graces both to pardon me ; 
His Majesty hath straitly given in charge 
That no man shall have private conference, 
Of what degree soever, with his brother. 

Glos. Even so ; an please your Worship, Brakenbury, 
You may partake of any thing we say : 
We speak no treason, man ; we say the King 



1* Tempers is frames, fashions, or disposes. 

15 This name is here three syllables. Commonly spelt Woodville. 

16 The widow is Queen Elizabeth, the name of whose deceased husband 
was Grey. Herself refers to Mrs. Jane Shore, quite a noted character of 
the time, whom King Edward is said to have cherished as a sort of left-hand 
wife. She was much mixed up with the intrigues of the Court. 



50 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT L 

Is wise and virtuous ; and his noble Queen 

Well struck in years, fair, and not jealous : 

We say that Shore's wife hath a pretty foot, 

A cherry lip, a bonny eye, a passing pleasing tongue ; 

And the Queen's kindred are made gentlefolks : 

How say you, sir? can you deny all this? 

Brak. With this, my lord, myself have nought to do. 

Glos. Nought to do with Mistress Shore ! I tell thee, fellow, 
He that doth naught ^^ with her, excepting one. 
Were best to do it secretly, alone. 

Brak. What one, my lord ? 

Glos, Her husband, knave : wouldst thou betray me ? 

Brak. Beseech your Grace to pardon me ; and, withal. 
Forbear your conference with the noble duke. 

Clar. We know thy charge, Brakenbury, and will obey. 

Glos. We are the Queen's abjects,^^ and must obey. — 
Brother, farewell : I will unto the King ; 
And whatsoe'er you will employ me in, — 
Were it to call King Edward's widow sister, — 
I will perform it to enfranchise you. 
Meantime, this deep disgrace in brotherhood 
Touches me deeper than you can imagine. 

Clar. I know it pleaseth neither of us well. 

Glos. Well, your imprisonment shall not be long ; 
I will deliver you, or else lie for you : ^^ 
Meantime have patience. 

17 Richard is quibbling between nought and naught, the latter of whicTi 
has the sense of bad, as in our word naughty. 

18 The lowest of her subjects. This substantive is found in Psalm xxxv. 
15 : "Yea, the very abjects came together against me unawares, making 
mouths at me, and ceased not." 

19 Or else lie in prison in your stead. But a quibble is probably intended 
between the two senses of lie. 



SCENE I. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 5 1 

Clar, I must perforce 1 farewell. 

\_Exeunt Clarence, Brakenbury, and Guard. 

Glos. Go, tread the path that thou shalt ne'er return, 
Simple, plain Clarence ! I do love thee so, 
That I will shortly send thy soul to Heaven, 
li Heaven will take the present at our hands. 
But who comes here ? the new-deliver'd Hastings ? 

Enter Hastings. 

Hast. Good time of day unto my gracious lord ! 

Glos. As much unto my good Lord Chamberlain ! 
Well are you welcome to the open air. 
How hath your lordship brook'd imprisonment ? 

Hast. With patience, noble lord, as prisoners must : 
But I shall live, my lord, to give them thanks 
That were the cause of my imprisonment. 

Glos. No doubt, no doubt ; and so shall Clarence too ; 
For they that were your enemies are his. 
And have prevail'd as much on ^^ him as you. 

Hast. More pity that the eagle should be mew'd, 
While kites and buzzards prey at liberty. 

Glos. What news abroad ? 

Hast. No news so bad abroad as this at home : 
The King is sickly, weak, and melancholy. 
And his physicians fear him^^ mightily. 

Glos. Now, by Saint Paul,22 this news is bad indeed. 
O, he hath kept an evil diet long. 
And overmuch consumed his royal person : 

20 Prevail'd on is here used iox prevaiV d against. 

21 Fear for him, of course. This mode of speech was not uncommon 
See The Merchant, page 157, note i. 

22 " By Saint Paul " was in fact Richard's favourite oath. 



52 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT I. 

'Tis very grievous to be thought upon. 
What, is he in his bed ? 

Hast. He is. 

Glos. Go you before, and I will follow you. — 

\^Exit Hastings. 
He cannot live, I hope ; and must not die 
Till George be pack'd with post-haste up to Heaven. 
I'll in, to urge his hatred more to Clarence, 
With lies well steel'd with weighty arguments ; 
And, if I fail not in my deep intent, 
Clarence hath not another day to live : 

Which done, God take King Edward to His mercy, .^^ 

And leave the world for me to bustle in ! \j \ ^A^ 

For then I'll marry Warwick's youngest daughter i^^ ,\y*rjVft'^ 
What though I kill'd her husband and her father? --— --^£^ 
The readiest way to make the wench amends, 
Is to become her husband and her father : 
The which will I ; not all so much for love 
As for another secret close intent,^^ 
By marrying her which I must reach unto. 
But yet I run before my horse to market : 
Clarence still breathes ; Edward still lives and reigns : 
When they are gone, then must I count my gains. \Exit, 



23 This was Lady Anne, daughter of Richard Neville, the great Earl of 
Warwick, known in history as the " king-maker." She had been married 
to Edward, Prince of Wales, son of King Henry the Sixth. Her young 
husband was killed, murdered, it was said, at the battle of Tewksbury, which 
took place May 4th, 1471. Her oldest sister, Isabella, wife to the Clarence 
of this play, had died some time before. 

24 This "secret close intent" probably was to get into his hands the son 
and daughter of Clarence, who had been left in the care of Lady Anne their 
aunt, and had succeeded to the larger portion of the vast estates of their 
grandfather, the great Earl of Warwick. 



SCENE II. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 53 



Scene II. — The Same. Another Street 

Enter the corpse of King Henry the Sixth, borne in an open 
coffin, Gentlemen with halberds to guard it, — among them 
Tressel and Berkeley ; and Lady Anne as Mourner. 

Anne. Set down, set down your honourable load, — 
If honour may be shrouded in a hearse, — 
Whilst I awhile obsequiously ^ lament 
Th' untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster. — 

\The Bearers set down the coffin. 
Poor key-cold 2 figure of a holy king ! 
Pale ashes of the House of Lancaster ! 
Thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood ! 
Be't lawful that I invocate thy ghost 
To hear the lamentations of poor Anne, 
Wife to thy Edward, to thy slaughtered son, 
Stabb'd by the selfsame hand that made these wounds ! 
Lo, in these windows that let forth thy life, 
I pour the helpless balm of my poor eyes : 
O, cursed be the hand that made these holes ! 
Cursed the heart that had the heart to do it ! 
Cursed the blood that let this blood from hence ! 
More direful hap betide that hated wretch 
That makes us wretched by the 'death of thee, 

1 To lament obsequiously is to make the lamentation proper to obsequies, 
or rites of burial. See Hamlet, page 6o, note 21. 

2 As cold as a key ; but why a key sbould be taken for an image of cold- 
ness is not very clear. The usage is not uncommon in the old writers. 
Shakespeare has it again in Lucrece : "And then in key-cold Lucrece' 
bleeding stream he falls." Thus, also, in Holland's Pliny : " In this habite, 
disguised as hee sat, hee was starke dead and key-cold before any man per- 
ceived it." 



54 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT I. 

Than I can wish to adders, spiders, toads, 

Or any creeping venom'd thing that hves ! 

If ever he have child, abortive be it, 

Prodigious,^ and untimely brought to light, 

Whose ugly and unnatural aspect 

May fright the hopeful mother at the view ; 

And that be heir to his unhappiness ! '* 

If ever he have wife, let her be made 

More miserable by the death of him 

Than I am made by my young lord and thee ! — 

Come, now towards Chertsey with your holy load, 

Taken from Paul's to be interred there ; 

And still, as you are weary of the weight, 

Rest you, whiles I lament King Henry's corse. 

\The Bearers take up the coffin and move forwards. 

Enter Gloster. 

Glos. Stay, you that bear the corse, and set it down. 

Anne. What black magician conjures up this fiend. 
To stop devoted charitable deeds ? 

Glos, Villains, set down the corse ; or, by Saint Paul, 
I'll make a corse of him that disobeys ! 

I Gent. My lord, stand back, and let the coffin pass. 

Glos. Unmanner'd dog ! stand thou, when I command : 
Advance^ thy halberd higher than my breast. 
Or, by Saint Paul, I'll strike thee to my foot, 

s Prodigious for monstrous ; one of the Latin senses of the word. Such 
births were held to be of evil omen. See A Midsummer-Night's Dream, 
page 112, note 25. 

* Unhappiness here means inischievousness , or propensity to mischief. 
The Poet has it several times in this sense. See Much Ado, p. 53, note 32, 

* Kere, as often, advance is raise or lift up. — Unmanned d, in the pre- 
ceding line, is unmannerly, or insolent. 



SCENE II. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 55 

And spurn upon thee, beggar, for thy boldness. 

\The Bearers set down the coffin. 
Anne. What, do you tremble ? are you all afraid ? 

Alas, I blame you not ; for you are mortal. 

And mortal eyes cannot endure the Devil. — 

Avaunt, thou dreadful minister of Hell ! 

Thou hadst but power over his mortal body. 

His soul thou canst not have ; therefore be gone. 
Glos. Sweet saint, for charity, be not so curst.^ 
Anne. Foul devil, for God's sake, hence, and trouble us not ; 

For thou hast made the happy Earth thy hell, 

Fill'd it with cursing cries and deep exclaims. 

If thou delight to view thy heinous deeds. 

Behold this pattern of thy butcheries. — 

O, gentlemen, see, see ! dead Henry's wounds 

Open their congeal'd mouths and bleed ''' afresh ! — 

Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity ; 

For 'tis thy presence that exhales ^ this blood 

From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells : 

Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural, 

Provokes this deluge most unnatural. — 

O God, which this blood madest, revenge his death ! 

O Earth, which this blood drink'st, revenge his death ! 



6 Curst is sharp-tongued, or fierce and bitter of speech. Repeatedly so. 
See A Midsummer-Nigh fs Dream, page jj, note 26. 

7 This is founded on Holinshed's account of Henry's funeral : " The dead 
corps was conveied from the Tower to the church of saint Paule, and there 
laid on a beire or coffen bare-faced : the same in presence of the beholders 
did bleed. From thense he was caried to the BlackMers, and bled there 
likewise." — It used to be thought that the body of a murdered person 
would bleed afresh, if touched or approached by the murderer. 

8 Shakespeare repeatedly has exhale in the sense of draw out. In 
Henry V. Pistol uses it imperatively, meaning, " draw thy sword." 



56 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT I. 

Either, Heaven, with lightning strike the murderer dead ; 
Or, Earth, gape open wide, and eat him quick,^ 
As thou dost swallow up this good King's blood, 
Which his hell-govern'd arm hath butchered ! 

Glos. Lady, you know no rules of charity. 
Which renders good for bad, blessings for curses. 

Anne. Villain, thou know'st no law of God nor man : 
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. 

Glos. But I know none, and therefore am no beast. 

Anne. O wonderful, when devils tell the truth ! 

Glos. More wonderful, when angels are so angry. 
Vouchsafe, divine perfection of a woman. 
Of these supposed crimes, to give me leave. 
By circumstance, but to acquit myself. 

Anne. Vouchsafe, diffused ^^ infection of a man, 
For these known evils, but to give me leave. 
By circumstance, to curse thy cursed self. 

Glos. Fairer than tongue can name thee, let me have 
Some patient leisure to excuse myself. 

Anne. Fouler than heart can think thee, thou canst make 
No Excuse current, but to hang thyself. 

Glos. By such despair, I should accuse myself. 

Anne. And, by despairing, shouldst thou stand excused 
For doing worthy vengeance on thyself. 
That didst unworthy slaughter upon others. 

Glos. Say, that I slew them not. 

Anne. Why, then they are not dead : 

But dead they are, and, devilish slave, by thee. 

9 Quick is alive or living ; so that the meaning is swallow him alive. So 
in Hamlet, v. i : " Be buried quick with her, and so will I." See, also, The 
Winter s Tale, page 117, note 18. 

1° Diffused sometimes meant dark, obscure, uncouth, or confused. 



SCENE II. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 57 

Glos, I did not kill your husband. 

Anne. "' Why, then he is alive. 

G/os. Nay, he is dead ; and slain by Edward's hand. 

Anne. In thy foul throat thou liest : Queen Margaret saw 
Thy murderous falchion smoking in his blood j 
The which thou once didst bend against her breast. 
But that thy brothers beat aside the point. 

Glos. I was provoked by her slanderous tongue. 
That laid their guilt ^^ upon my guiltless shoulders. 

Anne. Thou wast provoked by thy bloody mind, 
That never dreamt on aught but butcheries : 
Didst thou not kill this King? 

Glos. I grant ye. 

Anne. Dost grant me, hedgehog ? then, God grant me too 
Thou mayst be damned for that wicked deed ! 
O, he was gentle, mild, and virtuous ! 

Glos. The fitter for the King of Heaven, that hath him. 

Anne. He is in Heaven, where thou shalt never come. 

Glos. Let him thank me, that holp ^^ to send him thither ; 
For he was fitter for that place than Earth. 

Anne. And thou unfit for any place but Hell. 

Glos. Yes, one place else, if you will hear me name it. 

Anne. Some dungeon. 

Glos. Your bed-chamber. 

Anne. Ill rest betide the chamber where thou liest ! 

Glos. So will it, madam, till I lie with you. 

Anne. I hope so. 

Glos. I know so. But, gentle Lady Anne, — 

11 The guilt of his brothers who slew the Prince. 

12 Holp or holpen is the old preterite form of the verb to help. It occurs 
very often in the English Psalter, which is a much older version of the 
Psalms than that in the Bible. 



58 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT I. 

To leave this keen encounter of our wits, 
And fall somewhat into a slower method, — 
Is not the causer of the timeless ^^ deaths 
Of these Plantagenets, Henry and Edward, 
As blameful as the executioner ? 

Anne. Thou wast the cause, and most accursed th' effect.^^ 

Glos. Your beauty was the cause of that effect ; 
Your beauty that did haunt me in my sleep 
To undertake the death of all the world. 
So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom. 

Anne. If I thought that, I tell thee, homicide, 
These nails should rend that beauty from my cheeks. 

Glos. These eyes could not endure that beauty's wreck ; 
You should not blemish it, if I stood by : 
As all the world is cheered by the Sun, 
So I by that ; it is my day, my life. 

Anne. Black night o'ershade thy day, and death thy Hfe ! 

Glos. Curse not thyself, fair creature ; thou art both. 

Anne. I would I were, to be revenged on thee. 

Glos. It is a quarrel most unnatural. 
To be revenged on him that loveth thee. 

Anne. It is a quarrel just and reasonable. 
To be revenged on him that kill'd my husband. 

Glos. He that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband. 
Did it to help thee to a better husband. 

Anne. His better doth not breathe upon the Earth. 

Glos. He lives that loves thee better than he could. 

13 Timeless, here, is untimely. A frequent use of the word in Shake- 
speare's time. So in Romeo and Juliet, v. 3 : " Poison, I see, hath been his 
timeless end." In the first speech of this scene, we have a like use of help- 
Itss for unhelping or unavailing : " I pour the helpless balm of my poor 
eyes." 

1* And most accursed is the effect ; effect referring to their deaths 



SCENE II. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 59 

Anne. Name him. 

Glos. Plantagenet. 

Anne. Why, that was he. 

Glos. The selfsame name, but one of better nature. 

Anne. Where is he? 

Glos. Here. {She spits at him.'] Why dost 

thou spit at me ? 

Anne. Would it were mortal poison, for thy sake ! 

Glos. Never came poison from so sweet a place. 

Anne. Never hung poison on a fouler toad. 
Out of my sight ! thou dost infect mine eyes. 

Glos. Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine. 

Anne. Would they were basilisks,!^ to strike thee dead ! 

Glos. I would they were, that I might die at once ; 
For now they kill me with a living death. 
Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears, 
Shamed their aspects with store of childish drops : 
These eyes, which never shed remorseful ^^ tear, — 
Not when my father York and Edward wept 
To hear i^ the piteous moan that Rutland made 
When black-faced Clifford shook his sword at him ; 
Nor when thy warlike father, like a child. 
Told the sad story of my father's death. 
And twenty times made pause to sob and weep, 

15 The Poet has several allusions to this imaginary power of the reptile, 
called basilisk from its having on the head some resemblance to a crown ; 
the name being from the Greek, and signifying a little king. So Bacon, 
Advancement of Learning, xxi. 9 : " Fpr, as the fable goeth of the basilisk, 
that if he see you first, you die for it ; but if you see him first, he dieth ; so 
is it with deceits and evil arts." See The Winter's Tale, page 58, note 51. 

16 Remorse was continually used fox pity, remorsefuliox pitiful. 

17 Wept at heaHng ; the infinitive used gerundively. The Poet abounds 
in this usage. See Julius Ccesar, page 137, note 2. 



6o KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT I. 

That all the standers-by had wet their cheeks, 

Like trees bedash'd with rain ; — in that sad time 

My manly eyes did scorn an humble tear ; 

And what these sorrows could not thence exhale, 

Thy beauty hath, and made them bHnd with weeping. 

I never sued to friend nor enemy ; 

My tongue could never learn sweet smoothing words ; 

But, now thy beauty is proposed my fee. 

My proud heart sues, and prompts my tongue to speak. 

\_She looks scornfully at him. 
Teach not thy lips such scorn ; for they were made 
For kissing, lady, not for such contempt. 
If thy revengeful heart cannot forgive, 
Lo, here I lend thee -this sharp-pointed sword ; 
Which if thou please to hide in this true breast, 
And let the soul forth that adoreth thee, 
I lay it naked to the deadly stroke. 
And humbly beg the death upon my knee. 

[ Gives her his sword, and lays his breast open, kneeling. 
Nay, do not pause ; for I did kill King Henry, — 

\She offers at his breast with his sword. 
But 'twas thy beauty that provoked me. 
Nay, now dispatch ; 'twas I that stabb'd young Edward, — 

\She again offers at his breast. 
But 'twas thy heavenly face that set me on. 

\She lets fall the sword. 
Take up the sword again, or take up me. 

Anne. Arise, dissembler : though I wish thy death, 
I will not be thy executioner. 

Glos. Then bid me kill myself, and I will do it. 

\RiseSy and takes up his sword. 

Anne. I have already. 



SCENE II. 



KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 6l 



Glos, That was in thy rage : 

Speak it again, and, even with the word, 
This hand, which for thy love did kill thy love, 
Shall for thy love kill a far truer love ; 
To both their deaths shalt thou be accessary. 

Anne. I would I knew thy heart. 

Glos. 'Tis figured in my tongue. 

Anne. I fear me both are false. 

Glos. Then never man was true. 

Anne. Well, well, put up your sword. 

Glos. Say, then, my peace is made. 

Anne. That shalt thou know hereafter. 

Glos. But shall I live in hope ? 

Anne. All men, I hope, live so. 

Glos. Vouchsafe to wear this ring. 

Anne. To take, is not to give. \^She puts on the ring. 

Glos. Look, how my ring encompasseth thy finger, 
Even so thy breast encloseth my poor heart ; 
Wear both of them, for both of them are thine. 
And, if thy poor devoted servant may 
But beg one favour at thy gracious hand. 
Thou dost confirm his happiness for ever. 

Anne. What is it? 

Glos. That it may please you leave these sad designs 
To him that hath more cause to be a mourner, 
And presently repair to Crosby-place ; 
Where — after I have solemnly interr'd, 
At Chertsey monastery, this noble King, 
And wet his grave with my repentant tears — 
I will with all expedient ^^ duty see you : 

18 Expedient for expeditious. Repeatedly so. So in King fohn, ii. i: 
" His marches are expedient to this town." 



62 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT 1. 

For divers unknown reasons, I beseech you, 
Grant me this boon. 

Anne. With all my heart ; and much it joys me too 
To see you are become so penitent. — 
Tressel and Berkeley, go along with me. 

Glos. Bid me farewell. 

Anne. 'Tis more than you deserve ; 

But, since you teach me how to flatter you. 
Imagine I have said farewell already. 

[Exeunt Lady Anne, Tressel, and Berkeley. 

Glos. Sirs, take up the corse. 

Gent. Towards Chertsey, noble lord ? 

Glos. No, to White-Friars ; there attend ^^ my coming. — 

\_Exeunt all but Gloster. 
Was ever woman in this humour woo'd ? 
Was ever woman in this humour won ? 
I'll have her; — but I will not keep her long. 
What ! I, that kill'd her husband and his father, 
To take her in her heart's extremest hate ; 
With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes, 
The bleeding witness of her hatred by ; 
Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me. 
And I no friends to back my suit withal 
But the plain devil and dissembling looks, 
And yet to win her, — all the world to nothing ! ^o 
Ha! 

Hath she forgot already that brave Prince, 
Edward, her lord, whom I, some three months since, 
Stabb'd in my angry mood at TewksburyP^i 

19 Here, as often, attend is wait for or await. So in Coriolanus, i. i : 
" Your company to th' Capitol ; where our greatest friends attend us ! " 

20 » The chances against me were as all the world to nothing." 

21 This fixes the time of the scene to August, 1471. King Edward, how- 



SCENE II. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 63 

A sweeter and a lovelier gentleman — 

Framed in the prodigality of Nature, 

Voung, wise, and valiant, and, no doubt, right royal — 

The spacious world cannot again afford : 

And will she yet abase ^^ )^qy eyes on me, 

That cropp'd the golden prime of this sweet Prince, 

And made her widow to a woeful bed ? 

On me, whose all not equals Edward's moiety? 

On me, that halt and am mis-shapen thus ? 

My dukedom to a beggarly denier,23 

I do mistake my person all this while : 

Upon my life, she finds, although I cannot, 

Myself to be a marvellous proper ^^ man. 

I'll be at charges for a looking-glass ; 

And entertain a score or two of tailors 

To study fashions to adorn my body : 

Since I am crept in favour with myself, 

I will maintain it with some little cost. 

But first I'll turn yon fellow in ^^ his grave ; 

And then return lamenting to my love. — 

Shine out, fair Sun, till I have bought a glass, 

That I may see my shadow as I pass. [^£xif: 

ever, is introduced in the second Act dying. That King died in April, 
1483 ; consequently there is an interval between this Act and the next of 
almost twelve years. Clarence, who is represented in the preceding scene 
as committed to the Tower before the burial of King Henry VI., was in fact 
not confined till February, 1478, nearly seven years afterwards. 

22 To aiase is to cast down, to lower, or to let /all. 

23 A small coin, the twelfth part of a French sous. 

24 Marvellous is here used adverbially. Proper for handsome or well- 
proportioned. See The Merchant, page 91, note 17. 

25 Shakespeare uses in or into indifferently, as suits his verse. 



64 KING RICHARD -THE THIRD. ACTt 

Scene III. — The Same, A Room in the Palace. 
Enter Queen Elizabeth, Rivers, and Grey. 

Riv. Have patience, madam : there's no doubt his Maj- 
esty 
Will soon recover his accustom'd health. 

Grey. In that you brook it ill, it makes him worse : 
Therefore, for God's sake, entertain good comfort. 
And cheer his Grace with quick ^ and merry words. 

Q. Eliz. If he were dead, what would betide of me ? 

Riv. No other harm but loss of such a lord. 

Q. Eliz. The loss of such a lord includes all harms. 

Grey. The Heavens have bless'd you with a goodly son, 
To be your comforter when he is gone. 

Q. Eliz. Ah, he is young ; and his minority 
Is put into the trust of Richard Gloster, 
A man that loves not me nor none of you. 

Riv. Is it concluded he shall be protector? 

Q. Eliz. It is determined, not concluded ^ yet : 
But so it must be, if the King miscarry. 

Enter Buckingham and Stanley.^ 

Grey, Here come the Lords of Buckingham and Stanley. 

1 Quick, here, is lively, sprightly. So in Love's Labours Lost, i. 1 : *' But 
is there no quick recreation granted ? " 

2 A thing was said to be determined, when it was resolved upon ; con- 
cluded, when it -w^^ formally passed, so as to be a ground of action. 

3 Henry Stafford, the present Duke of Buckingham, was descended, on 
his father's side, from Thomas of Woodstock, the fifth son of Edward III. 
On his mother's side he was descended from John of Ghent, third son of 
the same great Edward. He was as accomplished and as unprincipled as 
he was nobly descended. — Thomas Lord Stanley was Lord Steward of the 
King's household to Edward IV, 



SCENE III. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 65 

Buck. Good time of day unto your royal Grace ! 

Stan. God make your Majesty joyful as you have been ! 

Q. Eliz. The Countess Richmond,^ good my Lord of 
Stanley, 
To your good prayer will scarcely say amen. 
Yet, Stanley, notwithstanding she's your wife, 
And loves not me, be you, good lord, assured 
I hate not you for her proud arrogance. 

Stan. I do beseech you, either not believe 
The envious slanders of her false accusers ; 
Or, if she be accused on true report, 
Bear with her weakness, which, I think, proceeds 
From wayward sickness, and no grounded malice. 

Riv. Saw you the King to-day, my Lord of Stanley? 

Stan. But now the Duke of Buckingham and I 
Are come from visiting his Majesty. 

Q. Eliz. What likelihood of his amendment, lords ? 

Buck. Madam, good hope ; his Grace speaks cheerfully. 

Q. Eliz. God grant him health ! Did you confer with 
him ? 

Buck. Ay, madam : he desires to make atonement ^ 
Between the Duke of Gloster and your brothers, 
And between them and my Lord Chamberlain ; 

^ The Countess of Richmond was Margaret, the only child of John Beaii- 
fort, the first Duke of Somerset, and so was descended from John of Ghent 
through the Beaufort branch of his family ; born out of wedlock. Margaret's 
first husband was Edmund, Earl of Richmond, son of Owen Tudor, by 
whom she became the mother of Henry VII. Afterwards she was married 
successively to Sir Henry Stafford, uncle of Buckingham, and to the Lord 
Stanley of this play, but had no more children. She lived to a great age, 
and was so highly reputed for prudence and virtue, that her grandson, 
Henry VIII., was mainly guided by her advice in forming his first council* 

5 Atonement is reconciliation, at-one-ment. See As You Like It, page 137, 
note 20. 



66 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT I. 

And sent to warn ^ them to his royal presence. 

Q. Eliz. Would all were well ! but that will never be : 
I fear our happiness is at the height. 

Enter Gloster, Hastings, and Dorset. 

Glos. They do me wrong, and I will not endure it: 
Who are they that complain unto the King 
That I, forsooth, am stern, and love them not ? 
By holy Paul, they love his Grace but Hghtly 
That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours. 
Because I cannot flatter and speak fair, 
Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive, and cog,"' 
Duck with French nods and apish courtesy, 
I must be held a rancorous enemy. 
Cannot a plain man live and think no harm. 
But thus his simple truth must be abused 
By silken, sly, insinuating Jacks ? 

Riv. To whom in all this presence speaks your Grace ? 

Glos, To thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace. 
When have I injured thee? when done thee wrong? — 
Or thee ? — or thee ? — or any of your faction ? 
A plague upon you all ! His royal Grace — 
Whom God preserve better than you would wish ! — 
Cannot be quiet scarce a breathing-while. 
But you must trouble him with lewd ^ complaints. 

Q. Eliz. Brother of Gloster, you mistake the matter. 
The King, of his own royal disposition, 

6 To warn was used for to summon. 

"^ To smooth, or to soothe, is, in old language, to insinuate and beguile 
with flattery; to cog, is to cajole and cheat. Repeatedly so. See Much 
Ado, page 109, note 8. 

8 Lewd in its old sense of knavish, wicked, or base. 



SCENE III. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 6/ 

And not provoked by any suitor else ; 
Aiming, belike, at your interior hatred, 
That in your outward action shows itself 
Against my children, brothers, and myself. 
Makes him to send, that thereby he may gather 
The ground of your ill-will, and so remove it. 

Glos. I cannot tell : the world is grown so bad, 
That wrens may prey where eagles dare not perch : 
Since every Jack became a gentleman. 
There's many a gentle person made a Jack.^ 

Q. Eliz. Come, come, we know your meaning, brother 
Gloster ; 
You envy my advancement and my friends' : 
God grant we never may have need of you ! 

Glos. Meantime, God grants that we have need of you : 
Our brother is imprison'd by your means. 
Myself disgraced, and the nobility 
Held in contempt ; while great promotions 
Are daily given to ennoble those 
That scarce, some two days since, were worth a noble. 

Q. Eliz. By Him that raised me to this careful height 
From that contented hap which I enjoy'd, 
I never did incense his Majesty 
Against the Duke of Clarence, but have been 
An earnest advocate to plead for him. 
My lord, you do me shameful injury. 
Falsely to draw me in these vile suspects. 

Glos. You may deny that you were not the cause 

9 yack was a common term of contempt or reproach. Richard is refer- 
ring to the Queen's kindred, her sons, the Greys, and her brothers, the 
Woodvilles, who, by her marriage with the King, were suddenly raised 
from a far inferior rank to all but the highest. 



6S KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT L 

Of my Lord Hastings' late imprisonment. \ 

J^iv. She may, my lord ; for — J 

G/os. She may, Lord Rivers ! why, who knows not so? 

She may do more, sir, than denying that : 

She may help you to many fair preferments ; 

And then deny her aiding hand therein, 

And lay those honours on your high desert. 

What may she not? She may, — ay, marry, may she, — 
I^w. What, marry, may she ? 
G/os. What, marry, may she ! marry with a king, 

A bachelor, a handsome stripling too : 

I wis^^ your grandam had a worser match. 

Q. Eliz. My Lord of Gloster, I have too long borne 

Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs : 

By Heaven, I will acquaint his Majesty 

With those gross taunts I often have endured. 

I had rather be a country servant-maid 

Than a great queen, with this condition, 

To be so baited, scorn'd, and stormed at : 

Enter Queen Margaret, behind. 

Small joy have I in being England's Queen. 

Q. Mar. [Aside.'] And lessen'd be that small, God, I be- 
seech Him ! 
Thy honour, state, and seat is due to me. 

G/os. What ! threat you me with telling of the King? 
Tell him, and spare not : look, what I have said 
I will avouch in presence of the King : 

10 Dyce thinks that the writers of Shakespeare's time used / wis " as 
equivalent to / ween." Here it seems to have about the sense of / fkinA, 
I guess, or, as they say at the South, / reckon. See The Merchant, page 130, 
note 9. 



SCENE III. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 69 

I dare adventure to be sent to th' Tower. 
'Tis time to speak ; my pains are quite forgot. 

Q. Mar. \_Aside.'\ Out, devil ! I remember them too 
well : 
Thou kill'dst my husband Henry in the Tower, 
And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury. ^ 

Glos. Ere you were queen, ay, or your husband king, 
I was a pack-horse in his great affairs ; 
A weeder-out of his proud adversaries, 
A liberal rewarder of his friends : 
To royalize his blood I spilt mine own. 

Q. Mar. \^AsiWe.'] Ay, and much better blood than his 
or thine. 

G/os. In all which time you and your husband Grey 
Were factious for the House of Lancaster ; — 
And, Rivers, so were you : — was not your husband 
In Margaret's battle ^^ at Saint Alban's slain? 
Let me put in your minds, if you forget. 
What you have been ere now, and what you are ; 
Withal, what I have been, and what I am. 

Q. Mar. \_Aside.'] A murderous villain, and so still thou 

art. 

11 Battle here probably means army. A common use of the word in old 
writers. — Sir John Grey, the Queen's former husband, fell in what is known 
as the second battle of Saint Alban's, which took place February 18, 1461. 
In that battle the Lancastrians were victorious, Queen Margaret being at 
the head of the army on that side. Their advantage, however, was much 
more than lost at the great battle of Towton, fought on the 29th of March 
following, and one of the fiercest and bloodiest in the long series of wars 
known as the Wars of the Roses. Upon this triumph of the Yorkists, many 
of the Lancastrians, and among them the Greys, were attainted, and stripped 
of their possessions. It was upon her throwing herself at the feet of King 
Edward, and soliciting a reversal of the attainder in behalf of her destitute 
children, that the Lady Grey first won his pity, which soon warmed into 
love. See Third Part of Henry the Sixth, iii. 2, 



*JO KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT I. 

Glos. Poor Clarence did forsake his father, Warwick ; 
Ay, and forswore himself, — which Jesu pardon ! — 

Q. Mar. \^Aside.'] Which God revenge ! 

G/os. — To fight on Edward's party, for the crown ; 
And for his meed, poor lord, he is mew'd up. 
I would to God my heart were flint, like Edward's ; 
Or Edward's soft and pitiful, like mine : 
I am too childish-foolish for this world. 

Q. Mar. \_AsiWe.'] Hie thee to Hell for shame, and 
leave this world. 
Thou cacodemon ! ^^ there thy kingdom is. 

J^i'v. My Lord of Gloster, in those busy days 
Which here you urge to prove us enemies. 
We foUow'd then our lord, our lawful King : 
So should we you, if you should be our king. 

G/os. If I should be ! I had rather be a pedler : 
Far be it from my heart, the thought of it ! 

Q. Eliz. As little joy, my lord, as you suppose 
You should enjoy, were you this country's King, 
As httle joy may you suppose in me. 
That I enjoy, being the Queen thereof. 

Q. Mar. \_Aside7\ As little joy enjoys the Queen thereof; 
For I am she, and altogether joyless. 

I can no longer hold me patient. — [Advancing. 

Hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out 
In sharing that which you have pill'd ^^ from me ! 
Which of you trembles not that looks on me ? 
If not, that, I being queen, you bow like subjects. 
Yet that, by you deposed, you quake like rebels ? — 

12 A cacodemon is an evil spirit, a fiend. The word is Greek. 

13 To pill is to pillage. It is often used with to poll or strip. " Kildare 
did use to pill and poll his frie^des, tenants, and reteyners," — HOLINSIJEPv 



SCENE III. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 7 1 

Ah, gentle villain, do not turn away ! 
, Glos. Foul wrinkled witch, what makest ^"^ thou in my 
sight ? 

Q. Mar. But repetition of what thou hast marr'd ; 
That will I make before I let thee go. 

Gios. Wert thou not banished on pain of death ? ^^ 

Q. Mar. I was ; 
But I do find more pain in banishment 
Than death can yield me here by my abode. 
A husband and a son thou owest to me, — 
And thou a kingdom, — all of you allegiance : 
The sorrow that I have, by right is yours ; 
And all the pleasures you usurp are mine. 

Glos. The curse my noble father laid on thee. 
When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper. 
And with thy scorns drew'st rivers from his eyes ; 
And then, to dry them, gavest the duke a clout 
Steep'd in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland ; — 
His curses, then from bitterness of soul 
Denounced against thee, are all fall'n upon thee ; 
And God, not we, hath plagued thy bloody deed.^^ 

Q. Eliz. So just is God, to right the innocent. 

14 " What makest thou " is old language for " what doest thou." Here it 
means, " what business have you in this place ? " See As You Like It, 
page 57, note 4. — Gentle, in the line before, is high-born. 

15 Margaret fled into France after the battle of Hexham, in 1464, and 
Edward issued a proclamation prohibiting any of his subjects from aiding 
her return, or harbouring her, should she attempt to revisit England. She 
remained abroad till April, 1471, when she landed at Weymouth. After 
the battle of Tewksbury, in May, 1471, she was confined in the Tower, 
where she continued a prisoner till 1475, when she was ransomed by her 
father Reignier, and removed to France, where she died in 1482. 

16 The matter here referred to is set forth at length in the Third Part of 
Henry the Sixth, Act i. scene 4. 



72 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT I, 

Hast. O, 'twas the foulest deed to slay that babe, 
And the most merciless that e'er was heard of ! 

Riv. Tyrants themselves wept when it was reported. 

Dor. No man but prophesied revenge for it. 

Buck. Northumberland, then present, wept to see it. 

Q. Mar. What ! were you snarling all before I came, 
Ready to catch each other by the throat. 
And turn you all your hatred now on me ? 
Did York's dread curse prevail so much with Heaven, 
That Henry's death, my lovely Edward's death, 
Their kingdom's loss, my woeful banishment, 
Could all but answer for that peevish brat ? 
Can curses pierce the clouds and enter Heaven? — 
Why, then give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses ! — 
Though not by war, by surfeit die your King, 
As ours by murder, to make him a king ! 
Edward thy son, that now is Prince of Wales, 
For Edward my son, that was Prince of Wales, 
Die in his youth by like untimely violence ! 
Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen. 
Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self ! 
Long mayst thou live to wail thy children's loss j 
And see another, as I see thee now, 
Deck'd in thy rights, as thou art stall'd in mine ! 
Long die thy happy days before thy death ; 
And, after many lengthen'd hours of grief. 
Die neither mother, wife, nor England's Queen ! — 
Rivers and Dorset, you were standers-by, — 
And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, — when my son 
Was stabb'd with bloody daggers : God, I pray Him, 
That none of you may live his natural age. 
But by some unlook'd accident cut off ! 



SCENE III. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 73 

Glos, Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither'd 
hag! 

Q. Mar. And leave out thee ? stay, dog, for thou shalt 
hear me. 
If Heaven have any grievous plague in store 
Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee, 
O, let them ^'^ keep it till thy sins be ripe, 
And then hurl down their indignation 
On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace ! 
The worm of conscience still be-gnaw thy soul ! 
Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou livest, 
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends ! 
No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine, 
Unless it be while some tormenting dream 
Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils ! 
Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rooting hog ! ^^ 
Thou that wast seal'd in thy nativity 
The slave of Nature and the son of Hell ! 
Thou slander of thy heavy mother's womb ! 
Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins ! 
Thou rag of honour ! thou detested — 

Glos. Margaret. 

Q. Mar, Richard ! 

Glos. Ha ! 

Q. Mar. 'I call thee not. 

Glos. I cry thee mercy, then ; for I did think 

17 Them refers to Heaven, the latter being a collective noun. 

18 She calls him hog, in allusion to his cognizance, which was a hoar. 
" The expression," says Warburton, " is fine : remembering her youngest 
son, she alludes to the ravage which hogs make with the finest flowers in 
gardens ; and intimating that Elizabeth was to expect no other treatment 
for her sons," — Elvish-mark' d refers to the old belief that deformities of 
person were the work of malignant or mischievous fairies or elves. 



74 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT I. 

That thou hadst call'd me all these bitter names. 

Q. Mar. Why, so I did ; but look'd for no reply. 
O, let me make the period to my curse ! 

Glos. 'Tis done by me, and ends in — Margaret. 

Q. Eliz. Thus have you breathed your curse against your- 
self. 

Q. Mar. Poor painted Queen, vain flourish of my fortune ! 
Why strew'st thou sugar on that bottled spider,!^ 
Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about ? 
Fool, fool ! thou whett'st a knife to kill thyself. 
The day will come that thou shalt wish for me 
To help thee curse that poisonous bunch-back'd toad. 

Hast False-boding woman, end thy frantic curse, 
Lest to thy harm thou move our patience. 

Q. Mar. Foul shame upon you ! you have all moved mine. 

Riv. Were you well served, you would be taught your duty. 

Q. Mar. To serve me well, you all should do me duty, 
Teach me to be your queen, and you my subjects : 
O, serve me well, and teach yourselves that duty ! 

Dor. Dispute not with her ; she is lunatic. 

Q. Mar. Peace, master marquess, you are malapert : 
Your fire-new 2^ stamp of honour is scarce current : 
O, that your young nobility could judge 
What 'twere to lose it, and be miserable ! 
They that stand high have many blasts to shake them ; 
And if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces. 

Glos. Good counsel, marry : — learn it, learn it, marquess. 

Dor. It touches you, my lord, as much as me. 

Glos. Ay, and much more ; but I was born so high : 

19 Alluding to Richard's form and venom. A bottled spider is a large^ 
bloated spider ; supposed to contain venom in proportion to its size. 

20 pir^-new is the old term for what we call brand-new. 



SCENE III. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 75 

Our eyrie ^^ buildeth in the cedar's top, 

And dallies with the wind, and scorns the Sun. 

Q. Mar. And turns the Sun to shade ; — alas ! alas ! — 
Witness my son, now in the shade of death ; 
Whose bright out-shining beams thy cloudy wrath 
Hath in eternal darkness folded up. 
Your eyrie buildeth in our eyrie's nest : — 
O God, that see'st it, do not suffer it ; 
As it was won with blood, lost be it so !. 

Riv. Peace, peace, for shame, if not for charity. 

Q. Mar. Urge neither charity nor shame to me : 
Uncharitably with me have you dealt, 
And shamefully by you my hopes are butcher'd. 
My charity is outrage, life my shame ; ^^ 
And in that shame still live my sorrow's rage ! 

Buck. Have done, have done. 

Q. Mar. O princely Buckingham, I'll kiss thy hand, 
In sign of league and amity with thee : 
Now fair befall thee and thy noble House ! 
Thy garments are not spotted with our blood. 
Nor thou within the compass of my curse. 

Buck. Nor no one here ; for curses never pass 
The lips of those that breathe them in the air. 

Q. Mar. I'll not believe but they ascend the sky, 
And there awake God's gentle-sleeping peace. 
O Buckingham, take heed of yonder dog ! 

21 Eyrie for brood. This word properly signified a brood of eagles, or 
hawks ; though in later times often used for the nest of those birds of prey. 
Its etymology is from eyren, eggs. 

22 " Outrage is the only charity shown me, and a life of shame, dishonour, 
is all the life permitted me." " My charity " may mean either the charity 
done by me or that done to me ; here it means the latter. For similar in^ 
Stances of construction, see The Tempest, page 138, note 23. 



^6 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT I. 

Look, when he fawns he bites ; and, when he bites, 
His venom tooth will rankle to the death : 
Have not to do with him, beware of him ; 
Sin, death, and Hell have set their marks on him ; 
And all their ministers attend on him. 

Glos. What doth she say, my Lord of Buckingham ? 

Buck. Nothing that I respect, my gracious lord. 

Q. Mar. What, dost thou scorn me for my gentle counsel ? 
And soothe the devil that I warn thee from ? 
O, but remember this another day. 
When he shall split thy very heart with sorrow. 
And say, poor Margaret was a prophetess ! — 
Live each of you the subjects to his hate. 
And he to yours, and all of you to God's ! \^ExiU 

Hast My hair doth stand on end to hear her curses. 

Riv. And so doth mine : I muse ^3 why she's at liberty. 

Glos. I cannot blame her : by God's holy Mother, 
She hath had too much wrong ; and I repent 
My part thereof that I have done to her. 

Q. Eliz. I never did her any, to my knowledge. 

Glos. Yet you have all the vantage of her wrong. 
I was too hot to do somebody good 
That is too cold in thinking of it now. 
Marry, as for Clarence, he is well repaid ; 
He is frank'd up ^4 to fatting for his pains : 
God pardon them that are the cause of it ! 

Riv. A virtuous and a Christian-like conclusion, 
To pray for them that have done scathe to us. 

23 To muse is, in old usage, to marvel or to wonder. 

24 A frank is a pen or coop in which hogs and other animals were con- 
fined while fatting. To be franked up was to be closely confined. To 
franch, or frank, was to stuff, to cram, or fatten. 



b'CENE III. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. J'J 

Glos. So do I ever, being well advised ; ^^ — 
\_Aside.'\ For, had I cursed now, I had cursed myself. 

Enter Catesby. 

Gates. Madam, his Majesty doth call for you, — 
And for your Grace, — and you, my noble lords. 

Q, Eliz. Catesby, I come. — Lords, will you go with me ? 

Riv. We wait upon your Grace. 

\_Exeunt all but Gloster. 

Glos. I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl. 
The secret mischiefs that I set abroach 
I lay unto the grievous charge of others. 
Clarence, whom I indeed have laid in darkness, 
I do beweep to many simple gulls ; 
Namely, to Hastings, Stanley, Buckingham ; 
And say it is the Queen and her allies 
That stir the King against the duke my brother. 
Now, they believe it ; and withal whet me 
To be revenged on Rivers, Vaughan, Grey : 
But then I sigh ; and, with a piece of Scripture, 
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil : 
And thus I clothe my naked villainy 
With old odd ends stol'n out of Holy Writ ; 
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil. 
But, soft ! here come my executioners. — 

Enter two Murderers. 

How now, my hardy, stout-resolved ^^ mates ! 

25 " Being well advised " is the same as having well considered, c^as we 
now say, speaking or acting advisedly. See The Merchant, page i8o, 
note I. — Scathe, in the line before, is an old word for harm. 

26 Stout-resolved is the same in sense as boldly resolute; or, as we might 
say, men of iron resolution. 



yS KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT I. 

Are you now going to dispatch this thing ? 

I Murd. We are, my lord ; and come to have the 
warrant, 
That we may be admitted where he is. 

Glos. Well thought upon ; I have it here about me : 

\_Gives the warrant 
When you have done, repair to Crosby-place. 
But, sirs, be sudden in the execution. 
Withal obdurate, do not hear him plead ; 
For Clarence is well-spoken, and perhaps 
May move your hearts to pity, if you mark him. 

I Murd. Tut, tut, my lord, we will not stand to prate ; 
Talkers are no good doers : be assured 
We go to use our hands, and not our tongues. 

Glos, Your eyes drop millstones,^''' when fools' eyes drop 
tears : 
I hke you, lads ; about your business straight ; 
Go, go, dispatch. 

I Murd. We will, my noble lord. [^Exeunt. 

Scene IV. — The Same. A Roojn in the Tower. 
Enter Clarence and Brakenbury. 

Brak. Why looks your Grace so heavily to-day? 

Clar. O, I have pass'd a miserable night. 
So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights. 
That, as I am a Christian faithful man, 
I would not spend another such a night, 

27 Weeping mill-stones was a proverbial phrase used of persons not apt 
to ween. It occurs in the tragedy of Ccesar and Pompey, iSc/j. " Men's eyes 
must mill-stones drop, when fools shed tears." 



SCENE IV. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 79 

Though 'twere to buy a world of happy days ; 
So full of dismal terror was the time ! 

Brak. What was your dream, my lord ? I pray you, tell me. 

Clar. Methought that I had broken from the Tower, 
And was embark'd to cross to Burgundy ; ^ 
And, in my company, my brother Gloster ; 
Who from my cabin tempted me to walk 
Upon the hatches : thence we look'd toward England, 
And cited up a thousand heavy times, 
During the wars of York and Lancaster, 
That had befall'n us. As we paced along 
Upon the giddy footing of the hatches, 
Methought that Gloster stumbled j and, in falling, 
Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard 
Into the tumbling billows of the main. 
O Lord ! methought, what pain it was to drown ! 
What dreadful noise q^ water in mine ears ! 
What ugly sights of death within mine eyes ! 
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks ; 
A thousand men that fishes gnaw'd upon ; 
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, 
Inestimable stones, unvalued ^ jewels, 
All scattered in the bottom of the sea : 
Some lay in dead men's skulls ; and, in those holes 
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept — 
As 'twere in scorn of eyes — reflecting gems. 
That woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep, 
And mock'd the dead bones that lay scatter'd by. 

1 Clarence was desirous to aid his sister Margaret against the French 
King, who invaded her jointure lands after the death of her husband, Charles 
Duke of 'Burgundy, who was killed at Nanci, in January, 1477. 

2 Unvalued for invaluable, not to be valued, inestimable. 



80 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT I. 

Brak. Had you such leisure in the time of death 
To gaze upon the secrets of the deep ? 

Clar. Methought I had ; and often did I strive 
To yield the ghost : but still the envious ^ flood 
Stopt-in my soul, and would not let it forth 
To find the empty, vast, and wandering air ; 
But smother'd it within my panting bulk,^ 
Which almost burst to belch it in the sea. 

Brak. Awaked you not with this sore agony? 

Clar. No, no, my dream was lengthen'd after life : 
O, then began the tempest to my soul ! 
I pass'd, methought, the melancholy flood, 
With that grim ferryman which poets write of, 
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night. 
The first that there did greet my stranger soul 
Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick ; 
Who cried aloud. What scourge for perjury 
Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence ? 
And so he vanish'd : then came wandering by 
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair 
Dabbled in blood ; and he shriek'd out aloud, 

3 Envious in the sense of malicious, which was then its more common 
meaning. So in the preceding scene : " The envious slanders of her false 
accusers." 

4 Bulk was u^ed for breast. So in Hamlet, ii. 2 : " He raised a sigh so 
piteous and profound, that it did seem to shatter all his bulk, and end his 
being." — Vast, in the line before, is void or waste ; like the Latin vastus. — 
The " wandering air " is the aerial expanse where the soul would be free to 
use its wings, and roam at large. So in the description of Raphael's voy- 
age to the Earth, Paradise Lost, v. 267 : 

He speeds, and through the vast ethereal sky 
Sails between worlds and worlds, with steady wing, 
Now on the polar winds, then with quick fan 
Winnows the buxom air. 



SCENE IV. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 8 1 

Clarence is come^false, fleeting^ perjured Clarence, 
TTial stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury: 
Seize on him, Furies, take him to your torments ! 
With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends 
Environ'd me, and howled in mine ears 
Such hideous cries, that, with the very noise, 
I trembling waked, and, for a season after, 
Could not believe but that I was in Hell ; 
Such terrible impression made my dream. 

Brak. No marvel, lord, though it affrighted you ; 
I am afraid, methinks, to hear you tell it. 

Clar. O Brakenbury, I have done those things, 
That now give evidence against my soul, 
For Edward's sake ; and see how he requites me ! — 
O God ! if my deep prayers cannot appease Thee, 
But Thou wilt be avenged on my misdeeds. 
Yet execute Thy will on me alone ; 
O, spare my guiltless wife ^ and my poor children ! — 
Keeper, I pr'ythee, sit by me awhile ; 
My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep. 

Brak. I will, my lord : God give your Grace good rest ! — 

[Clarence sleeps in a chair. 
Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours, 
Makes the night morning, and the noontide night. 
Princes have but their titles for their glories, 
An outward honour for an inward toil ; 
And, for unfelt imaginations, 



fi Fleeting or flitting, in old language, was used for uncertain, inconstant, 
fluctuating. Clarence broke his oath with the Earl of Warwick, and joined 
the army of his brother Edward. 

® The wife of Clarence died before he was apprehended and confined in 
the Tower. See page 52, note 23. 



82 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT I. 

They often feel a world of restless cares : "'' 
So that, between their titles and low name. 
There's nothing differs but the outward fame. 

Enter the two Murderers. 

/ Murd. Ho ! who's here ? 

Brak. What wouldst thou, fellow? and how earnest thou 
hither ? 

1 Murd. I would speak with Clarence, and I came hither 
on my legs. 

Brak. What, so brief? 

2 Murd. 'Tis better, sir, than to be tedious. — Let him 
see our commission ; and talk no more. 

[i Murd. gives a paper to Brak., who reads it. 
Brak. I am, in this, commanded to deliver 
The noble Duke of Clarence to your hands : 
I will not reason what is meant hereby. 
Because I will be guiltless of the meaning. 
Here are the keys ; there sits the duke asleep : 
I'll to the King ; and signify to him 
That thus I have resign'd to you my charge. 

1 Murd. You may, sir ; 'tis a point of wisdom : fare you 
well. \^Exit Brakenbury. 

2 Murd. What, shall we stab him as he sleeps ? 

1 Murd. No ; he'll say 'twas done cowardly, when he 
wakes. 

2 Murd. When he wakes ! why, fool, he shall never wake 
till the judgment-day. 

I Murd, Why, then he'll say we stabb'd him sleeping. 

7 For imaginary pleasures which are unfelt by them, they often endure a 
great burden of restless cares, which they feel, to their cost. 



SCENE IV. 



KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 83 



2 Murd. The urging of that ^ox^ judgment VziCci bred a 
kind of remorse in me. 

1 Murd. What, art thou afraid ? 

2 Murd. Not to kill him, having a warrant for it ; but to 
be damn'd for killing him, from the which no warrant can 
defend me. 

1 Murd. I thought thou hadst been resolute. 

2 Murd. So I am, to let him live. 

1 Murd. I'll back to the Duke of Gloster, and tell him 
so. 

2 Murd. Nay, I pr'ythee, stay a Httle : I hope my holy 
humour will change ; it was wont to hold me but while one 
tells twenty. 

1 Murd. How dost thou feel thyself now ? 

2 Murd. Faith, some certain dregs of conscience are yet 
within me. 

1 Murd. Remember our reward, when the deed's done. 

2 Murd. Zounds, he dies : I had forgot the reward. 

1 Murd. Where's thy conscience now? 

2 Murd. In the Duke of Gloster's purse. 

1 Murd. So, when he opens his purse to give us our re- 
ward, thy conscience flies out. 

2 Murd. 'Tis no matter ; let it go j there's few or none 
will entertain it. 

1 Murd. What if it come to thee again? 

2 Murd. I'll not meddle with it ; it makes a man a cow- 
ard : a man cannot steal, but it accuseth him ; a man can- 
not swear, but it checks him: 'tis a blushing shame-faced 
spirit that mutinies in a man's bosom ; it fills one full of 
obstacles : it made me once restore a purse of gold, that by 
chance I found; it beggars any man that keeps it: it is 
turn'd out of all towns and cities for a dangerous thing ; and 



84 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT I. 

every man that means to live well endeavours to trust to 
himself and live without it. 

1 Murd. Zounds, it is even now at my elbow, persuading 
me not to kill the duke. 

2 Murd. Take the Devil in thy mind, and beheve him not : ^ 
he would insinuate with thee but to make thee sigh. 

J Murd. I am strong-framed ; he cannot prevail with me. 
2 Murd. Spoke like a tall fellow ^ that respects his reputa- 
tion. Come, shall we fall to work ? 

1 Murd. Take him over the costard with the hilts ^^ of 
thy sword, and then throw him into the malmsey-butt in tht 
next room. 

2 Murd. O excellent device ! and make a sop ^^ of him. 

1 Murd. Soft ! he wakes. 

2 Murd. Strike ! 

I Murd. No, we'll reason ^^ with him. 

8 Him refers to conscience, not to Devil. — To insinuate with is to make 
friends with, to flay upon, to beguile. The idea of conscience trying to 
wheedle and steal a man out of the Devil's leading is a most Shakesperian 
stroke of art. And the grim humour of these hired cut-throats in thus 
jesting away the approaches of preventive remorse is a capital instance of 
the Poet's inwardness with Nature. For even so men often laugh and 
sport themselves through the perpetration of crime ; the supremacy of the 
moral law, the self-assertive rights of conscience instinctively prompting 
them to such tricks of evasion. I can hardly think of any one particular 
wherein Shakespeare's moral sanity of genius is more pregnantly mani- 
fested. 

9 That is, a hold, stout-hearted fellow. See Twelfth Night, page 35, 
note 4. 

10 Hilts, the plural form, was commonly used where we should use hilt. 
— Costard, of course, is put for head. The word properly means apple, and 
was thus applied from similarity of shape. 

II A sop is anything soaked or steeped in liquor. 

12 Here, as often, to reason is to talk or converse. See The Merchant, 
page 126, note 3. — Soft! second line before, is the old exclamative foi 
hold! stay! ox not too fast ! 



SCENE IV. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 85 

Clar. [ Waking^ Where art thou, keeper ? give me a cup 
of wine. 

J Murd. You shall have wine enough, my lord, anon. 

Clar, In God's name, what art thou ? 

I Murd. A man, as you are. 

Clar, But not, as I am, royal. 

I Murd. Nor you, as we are, loyal. 

Clar. Thy voice is thunder, but thy looks are humble. 

I Murd. My voice is now the King's, my looks mine 
own, 

Clar. How darkly and how deadly dost thou speak ! 
Your eyes do menace me : why look you pale ? 
Who sent you hither ? Wherefore do you come ? 

Both Murd. To, to, to — 

Clar. To murder me ? 

Both Murd. Ay, ay. 

Clar. You scarcely have the hearts to tell me so, 
And therefore cannot have the hearts to do it. 
Wherein, my friends, have I offended you ? 

1 Murd. Offended us you have not, but the King. 
Clar. I shall be reconciled to him again. 

2 Murd. Never, my lord ; therefore prepare to die. 
Clar. Are you call'd forth from out a world of men 

To slay the innocent ? What is my offence ? 
Where is the evidence that doth accuse me ? 
What lawful quest i^ have given their verdict up 
Unto the frowning judge ? or who pronounced 
The bitter sentence of poor Clarence' death? 
Before I be convict ^^ by course of law, 

18 Quest here means dijury of inquest. 

1* Convict for convicted. Such shortened preterites are very frequent. 
Sec The Tempest^ page 56, note 43. 



86 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT 1 

To threaten me with death is most unlawful. 
I charge you, as you hope to have redemption 
By Christ's dear blood shed for our grievous sins. 
That you depart, and lay no hands on me : 
The deed you undertake is damnable. 

J Murd. What we will do, we do upon command. 

2 Murd. And he that hath commanded is our King. 

Clar. Erroneous vassals ! the great King of kings 
Hath in the table of His law commanded 
That thou shalt do no murder : will you, then, 
Spurn at His edict, and fulfil a man's ? 
Take heed ; for He holds vengeance in His hand, 
To hurl upon their heads that break His law. 

2 Murd. And that same vengeance doth He hurl on thee, 
For false forswearing, and for murder too : 
Thou didst receive the Sacrament to fight 
In quarrel of the House of Lancaster. 

1 Murd. And, like a traitor to the name of God, 
Didst break that vow ; and with thy treacherous blade 
Unripp'dst the bowels of thy sovereign's son. 

2 Murd. Whom thou wast sworn to cherish and defend. 
I Murd. How canst thou urge God's dreadful law to us, 

When thou hast broke it in such dear degree ? 

Clar. Alas ! for whose sake did I that ill deed ? 
For Edward, for my brother, for his sake : 
He sends you not to murder me for this ; 
For in that sin he is as deep as I. 
If God will be avenged for the deed, 
O, know you yet. He doth it publicly : 
Take not the quarrel from His powerful arm | 
He needs no indirect nor lawless course 
To cut off those that have offended Him, 



SCENE IV. 



KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 87 



I Murd. Who made thee, then, a bloody minister, 
When gallant-springing brave Plantagenet, 
That princely novice, was struck dead by thee ? 

Clar. My brother's love, the Devil, and my rage. 

1 Murd. Thy brother's love, our duty, and thy fault, 
Provoke us hither now to slaughter thee. 

Clar. If you do love my brother, hate not me ; 
I am his brother, and I love him well. 
If you are hired for meed, go back again, 
And I will send you to my brother Gloster, 
Who shall reward you better for my life 
Than Edward will for tidings of my death. 

2 Murd. You are deceived, your brother Gloster hates 

you. 

Clar. O, no, he loves me, and he holds me dear : 
Go you to him from me. 

Both Murd. Ay, so we will. 

Clar. Tell him, when that our princely father York 
Bless'd his three sons with his victorious arm. 
And charged us from his soul to love each other. 
He little thought of this divided friendship : 
Bid Gloster think of this, and he will weep. 

I Murd. Ay, millstones ; as he lesson'd us to weep. 

Clar. O, do not slander him, for he is kind. 

I Murd. Right, 
As snow in harvest. Come, you deceive yourself: 
'Tis he that sends us to destroy you here. 

Clar. It cannot be ; for he bewept my fortune. 
And hugg'd me in his arms, and swore, with sobs, 
That he would labour my delivery. 

I Murd. Why, so he doth, when he delivers you 
From this Earth's thraldom to the joys of Heaven. 



88 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT L 

2 Mui'd. Make peace with God, for you must die, my lord. 

Clar. Hast thou that holy feeling in thy soul, 
To counsel me to make my peace with God, 
And art thou yet to thy own soul so blind, 
That thou wilt war with God by murdering me ? 
Ah, sirs, consider, he that set you on 
To do this deed will hate you for the deed. 

2 Murd. What shall we -do ? 

Clar. Relent, and save your souls. 

J Murd. Relent ! 'tis cowardly and womanish. 

Clar. Not to relent is beastly, savage, devilish. 
My friend, I spy some pity in thy looks : 
O, if thine eye be not a flatterer. 
Come thou on my side, and entreat for me : 
A begging prince what beggar pities not ? 

1 Murd. Ay, \Stabbing him.'] thus, and thus : if all this 

will not do, 
I'll drown you in the malmsey-butt within. 

\_Extf, with the body, 

2 Murd. A bloody deed, and desperately dispatch'd ! 
How fain, like Pilate, would I wash my hands 

Of this most grievous murder ! 

Re-enter i Murderer. 

1 Murd. How now ! what mean'st thou, that thou help'st 

me not? 
By Heaven, the duke shall know how slack you've been. 

2 Murd. I would he knew that I had saved his brother ! 
Take thou the fee, and tell him what I say ; 

For I repent me that the duke is slain. \_Exit, 

I Murd. So do not I : go, coward as thou art. — 
Well, I'll go hide the body in some hole. 



SCENE I. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 89 

Till that the duke give order for his burial : 

And, when I have my meed, I will away; 

For this will out, and then I must not stay.*^ [^Exif. 



ACT II. 

Scene I. — London, A Room in the Palace. 

Enter King Edward, led in sick, Queen Elizabeth, Dorset, 
Rivers, Hastings, Buckingham, Grey, and others. 

K. Edw. Why, so ; now have I done a good day's work : 
You peers, continue this united league : 
I every day expect an embassage 
From my Redeemer to redeem me hence ; 
And now in peace my soul shall part ^ to Heaven, 
Since I have made my friends at peace on Earth. 
Rivers and Hastings, take each other's hand ; 
Dissemble not your hatred, swear your love.^ 

15 The Duke of Clarence was arraigned for treason before the Parlia- 
ment, convicted, and sentence of death passed upon him. This was in 
February, 1478, and a few days later it was announced that he had died in 
the Tower. So that this first Act of the play embraces a period of nearly 
seven years, the death of King Henry having occurred in May, 1471. The 
manner of Clarence's death has never been ascertained. It was generally 
attributed to the machinations of Richard. There was a fierce grudge be- 
tween the two Dukes, growing out of their rapacity towards the Warwick 
estates. See page 52, note 24. 

1 Part for depart; the two being often used indiscriminately. 

2 To dissemble is, strictly, to put off the show of what is, as to simulate is 
to/«/ on the show of what is not. So here the meaning is, " Do not merely 
put off the show of hatred, but eradicate it altogether, and swear love into 
its place." 



90 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT II. 

Riv. By Heaven, my soul is purged from grudging hate ; 
And with my hand I seal my true heart's love. 

Hast. So thrive I, as I truly swear the like ! 

K. Edw. Take heed you dally not before your King \ 
Lest He that is the supreme King of kings 
Confound your hidden falsehood, and award 
Either of you to be the other's end. 

Hast. So prosper I, as I swear perfect love ! 

Riv. And I, as I love Hastings with my heart ! 

K. Edw. Madam, yourself are not exempt in this, — 
Nor you, son Dorset, — Buckingham, nor you ; — 
You have been factious one against the other. 
Wife, love Lord Hastings, let him kiss your hand ; 
And what you do, do it unfeignedly. 

Q. Eliz. There, Hastings ; I will never more remember 
Our former hatred, so thrive I and mine ! 

K. Edw. Dorset, embrace him ; — Hastings, love lord 
marquess. 

Dor. This interchange of love, I here protest. 
Upon my part shall be inviolable. 

Hast. And so swear I. \_They embrace. 

K. Edw. Now, princely Buckingham, seal thou this league 
With thy embracements to my wife's allies, 
And make me happy in your unity. 

Buck. \To the Queen.] Whenever Buckingham doth turn 
his hate 
Upon your Grace, but^ with all duteous love 

3 A very uncommon use of but, which is here equivalent to and not, or, 
better, to or not. The full sense appears to be, " Whenever Buckingham 
doth turn his hate upon you, or rather when he doth not with all duteous 
love," &c. For another like instance of but, see The Winter's Tale, page 69, 
note 19. 



SCENE I. 



KING RICHARD THE THIRD. QI 



Doth cherish you and yours, God punish me 
With hate in those where I expect most love ! 
When I have most need to employ a friend, 
And most assured that he is a friend, 
Deep, hollow, treacherous, and full of guile, 
Be he unto me ! this do I beg of God, 
When I am cold in zeal to you or yours. 

\_Embracing Rivers, &c. 

K. Edw. A pleasing cordial, princely Buckingham, 
Is this thy vow unto my sickly heart. 
There wanteth now our brother Gloster here, 
To make the perfect period of this peace. 

Buck. And, in good time, here comes the noble duke. 

Enter Gloster. 

Glos, Good morrow to my sovereign King and Queen ; 
And, princely peers, a happy time of day ! 

K. Edw. Happy, indeed, as we have spent the day. 
Brother, we have done deeds of charity ; 
Made peace of enmity, fair love of hate. 
Between these swelling wrong-incensed peers. 

Glos. A blessed labour, my most sovereign hege. 
Among this princely heap,^ if any here, 
By false intelligence or wrong surmise, hold me 
A foe ; if I unwittingly, or in my rage, 
Have aught committed that is hardly borne 
By any in this presence, I desire 
To reconcile me to his friendly peace : 
'Tis death to me to be at enmity ; 

4 He^p for throng, crowd, or gathering, occurs repeatedly. So in Julius 
lessor, i. 3 : " And there were drawn upon a heap a hundred ghastly women, 
transformed with their fear." 



92 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT ii 

I hate it, and desire all good men's love. — 

First, madam, I entreat true peace of you, 

Which I will purchase with my duteous service j — 

Of you, my noble cousin Buckingham, 

If ever any grudge were lodged between us ; — 

Of you, Lord Rivers, — and, Lord Grey, of you, 

That all without desert have frown' d on me ; — 

Dukes, earls, lords, gentlemen ; — indeed, of all. 

I do not know that Englishman alive 

With whom my soul is any jot at odds 

More than the infant that is born to-night : 

I thank my God for my humility. 

Q. Eliz. A holiday shall this be kept hereafter : 
I would to God all strifes were well compounded. — 
My sovereign lord, I do beseech your Highness 
To take our brother Clarence to your grace. 

Glos. Why, madam, have I offer'd love for this. 
To be so flouted in this royal presence ? 
Who knows not that the gentle duke is dead? \_They all start. 
You do him injury to scorn his corse. 

K. Edw. Who knows not he is dead ! who knows he is ? 

Q. Eliz. All-seeing Heaven, what a world is this ! 

Buck. Look I so pale. Lord Dorset, as the rest? 

Dor. Ay, my good lord ; and no one in this presence 
But his red colour hath forsook his cheeks. 

K. Edw. Is Clarence dead ? the order was reversed. 

Glos. But he, poor man, by your first order died. 
And that a winged Mercury did bear ; 
Some tardy cripple bore the countermand. 
That came too lag to see him buried. 
God grant that some, less noble and less loyal, 
Nearer in bloody thoughts, but not in blood, 



SCENE I. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 93 

Deserve not worse than wretched Clarence did. 
And yet go current from suspicion ! 

Enter Stanley. 

Stan. A boon, my sovereign, for my service done ! 

K, Edw, I pr'ythee, peace ; my soul is fall of sorrow. 

Stan. I will not rise, unless your Highness hear me. 

K. Edw. Then say at once what is it thou request'st. 

Stan. The forfeit,^ sovereign, of my servant's life ; 
Who slew to-day a riotous gentleman 
Lately attendant on the Duke of Norfolk. 

K. Edw. Have I a tongue to doom my brother's death. 
And shall that tongue give pardon to a slave ? 
My brother kill'd no man : his fault was thought, 
And yet his punishment was bitter death. 
Who sued to me for him ? who, in my rage, 
Ejieel'd at my feet, and bade me be advised P^ 
Who spoke of brotherhood ? who spoke of love ? 
Who told me how the poor soul did forsake 
The mighty Warwick, and did fight for me ? 
Who told me, in the field at Tewksbury, 
When Oxford had me down, he rescued me, 
And said. Dear brother, live, and be a king? 
Who told me, when we both lay in the field 
Frozen almost to death, how he did lap me 
Even in his garments, and did give himself, 
All thin and naked, to the numb-cold night? 
All this from my remembrance brutish wrath 
Sinfully pluck'd, and not a man of you 

5 He means a remission of the forfeit ; the servant having forfeited his 
life by the act of homicide. 

6 Advised, again, for considerate, or cautious. See page tj, note 25. 



94 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IL 

Had so much grace to put it in my mind. 

But when your carters or your waiting- vassals 

Have done a drunken slaughter, and defaced 

The precious image of our dear Redeemer, 

You straight are on your knees for pardon, pardon ; 

And I, unjustly too, must grant it you : 

But for my brother not a man would speak. 

Nor I, ungracious, speak unto myself 

For him, poor soul. The proudest of you all 

Have been beholding ^ to him in his life ; 

Yet none of you would once plead for his life. — 

O God, I fear Thy justice will take hold 

On me, and you, and mine, and yours for this ! — 

Come, Hastings, help me to my closet. — Ah, 

Poor Clarence ! 

\Exeunt the King, the Queen, Hastings, Rivers, 

Dorset, and Grey. 

Glos. This is the fruit of rashness ! Mark'd you not 
How that the guilty kindred of the Queen 
Look'd pale when they did hear of Clarence' death? 
O, they did urge it still unto the King ! 
God will revenge it. But, come, let us m. 
To comfort Edward with our company. 

Buck. We wait upon your Grace. [Exeunt. 

■^ Beholding- where we should use beholden. Always so in Shakespeare. 
The word means obliged or indebted. 



SCENE II. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 95 



Scene II. — The Same. Another Room in the Palace, 

Enter the Duchess of York^ with a Son and Daughter of 

Clarence. 

Son. Good grandam, tell us, is our father dead? 

Duch. No, boy. 

Daugh. Why do you weep so oft, and beat your breast. 
And cry, O Clarence, my unhappy son ! 

Son. Why do you look on us, and shake your head, 
And call us orphans, wretches, castaways. 
If that our noble father be alive ? 

Duch. My pretty cousins,^ you mistake me both ; 
I do lament the sickness of the King, 
As loth to lose him, not your father's death : 
It were lost sorrow to wail one that's lost. 

Son. Then, grandam, you conclude that he is dead. 
The King my uncle is to blame for this : 
God will revenge it ; whom I will imp6rtune 
With daily prayers all to that effect. 

Daugh. And so will I. 

Duch. Peace, children, peace ! the King doth love you 
well : 
Incapable ^ and shallow innocents, 

1 Cicely, daughter of Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmoreland, and 
widow of Richard Duke of York, who was killed at the battle of Wakefield, 
1460. She survived her husband thirty-five years, living till the year 1495. 

2 The Duchess is speaking to her grandchildren, cousin being then used 
for this relation, as well as for nephew, niece, and indeed for kindred gen- 
erally. The word grandchild does not occur in Shakespeare. 

8 Incapable is here used nearly, if not exactly, in the sense of unconscious ; 
meaning that unconsciousness of evil which renders children unsuspecting. 
So in Hamlet, iv. 4 : "As one incapable of her own distress." 



96 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT n 

You cannot guess who caused your father's death. 

Son. Grandam, we can ; for my good uncle Gloster 
Told me, the King, provoked to't by the Queen, 
Devised impeachments to imprison him : 
And, when my uncle told me so, he wept, 
And pitied me, and kindly kiss'd my cheek ; 
Bade me rely on him as on my father. 
And he would love me dearly as his child. 

Duch. Ah, that deceit should steal such gentle'* shapes, 
And with a virtuous visor hide deep vice ! 
He is my son ; ay, and therein my shame ; 
Yet from my dugs^ he drew not this deceit. 

Son. Think you my uncle did dissemble,^ grandam? 

Duch, Ay, boy. 

Son. I cannot think it. Hark ! what noise is this ? 

Enter Queen Elizabeth, distj'actedly ; Rivers and Dorset 

foUowii2g her. 

Q. Eliz. O, who shall hinder me to wail and weep, 

To chide my fortune, and torment myself ? 

I'll join with black despair against my soul, 

And to myself become an enemy. 

Duch. What means this scene of rude impatience?"'' 
Q. Eliz. To make an act of tragic violence : 



* Gentle here means well-horn or high-born, as opposed to simple or low- 
born. So in i. 3, of this play : " Ah, gentle villain, do not turn away." 
Spoken to Richard by Margaret. 

5 This word was formerly thought good enough for the most refined lips 
arid the choicest strains of poetry. 

6 Dissemble was used, as it still is, both for feigning and for concealing 
thoughts and feelings. Here it has the sense of to simulate or to feign. 
See page 89, note 2. 

7 The endings -ience and -iance, as well a» -ion, -ian, and -ious, are often 



SCENE II. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 97 

Edward, my lord, thy son, our King, is dead ! 
Why grow the branches when the root is gone ? 
Why wither not the leaves that want their sap ? 
If you will live, lament ; if die, be brief,^ ■ 
That our swift-winged souls may catch the King's ; 
Or, like obedient subjects, follow him 
To his new kingdom of perpetual rest. 

Duck. Ah, so much interest have I in thy sorrow 
As I had title in thy noble husband ! 
I have bewept a worthy husband's death, 
And lived by looking on his images : ^ 
But now two mirrors of his princely semblance 
Are crack'd in pieces by mahgnant death. 
And I for comfort have but one false glass. 
That grieves me when I see my shame in him. 
Thou art a widow ; yet thou art a mother, 
And hast the comfort of thy children left thee : 
But death hath snatch'd my husband from mine arms, 
And pluck'd two crutches from my feeble hands, 
Clarence and Edward. O, what cause have I — 
Thine being but a moiety of my grief — 
To over-go thy plaints and drown thy cries ! 

Son. Ah, aunt, you wept not for our father's death ! 
How can we aid you with our kindred tears ? 

Daugh. Our fatherless distress was left unmoan'd ; 
Your widow-dolour likewise be unwept ! 

used as two syllables by Shakespeare, especially at the end of a verse. So, 
here, impatience is, properly, four syllables. And so in the preceding scenes 
we have the line, " Lest to thy harm thou move our patience" and the line, 
" And, for unfelt imaginations " ; Waox^-ience and -ions are strictly dissyllabic. 

8 That is, " be quick'.' Brief is often used so, as also briefly for quickly. 
So in Macbeth, ii. i : " Let's briefly put on manly readiness." 

9 " His images" are the children who represented and resembled him. 



^8 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT 11. 

Q. Eliz. Give me no help in lamentation ; 
I am not barren to bring forth complaints : 
All springs reduce ^^ their currents to mine eyes, 
That I, being govern 'd by the watery Moon, 
May send forth plenteous tears to drown the world ! 
Ah for my husband, for my dear lord Edward ! 

Children. Ah for our father, for our dear lord Clarence ! 

Duch. Alas for both, both mine, Edward and Clarence ! 

Q. Eliz. What stay had I but Edward? and he's gone. 

Children. What stay had we but Clarence ? and he's gone. 

Duch. What stays had I but they ? and they are gone. 

Q, Eliz. Was never widow had so dear a loss ! 

Children. Were never orphans had so dear a loss ! 

Duch. Was never mother had so dear a loss ! 
Alas, I am the mother of these griefs ! 
Their woes are parcell'd, mine are general. 
She for an Edward weeps, and so do I ; 
I for a Clarence weep, so doth not she : 
These babes for Clarence weep, and so do I ; 
I for an Edward weep, so do not they : — 
Alas, you three, on me, threefold distress'd. 
Pour all your tears ! I am your sorrow's nurse. 
And I will pamper it with lamentations. 

Dor. Comfort, dear mother : God is much displeased 
That you take with unthankfulness His doing : 
In common worldly things 'tis call'd ungrateful 
With dull unwillingness to repay a debt 
Which with a bounteous hand was kindly lent ; 
Much more to be thus opposite with Heaven, 

10 Reduce in the Latin sense of lead or bring back. Repeatedly so. In 
the next line, the Moon is called watery from her connection with the tides. 
In Hamlet, i. i, she is called "the moist star," for the same reason. 



SCENE II. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 99 

For it requires the royal debt it lent you. 

Riv. Madam, bethink you, like a careful mother, 
Of the young Prince your son : send straight for him ; 
Let him be crown'd ; in him your comfort lives : 
Drown desperate sorrow in dead Edward's grave, 
And plant your joys in living Edward's throne. 

Enter Gloster, Buckingham, Stanley, Hastings, Ratcliff, 

and others. 

Glos. Sister, have comfort : all of us have cause 
To wail the dimming of our shining star ; 
But none can cure their harms by wailing them. — 
Madam, my mother, I do cry you mercy ; ^^ 
I did not see your Grace : humbly on my knee 
I crave your blessing. 

Duch. God bless thee ; and put meekness in thy breast, 
Love, charity, obedience, and true duty ! 

Glos. Amen ; — \_Aside^ and make me die a good old 
man ! 
That is the butt-end of a mother's blessing : 
I marvel that her Grace did leave it out. 

Buck. You cloudy princes and heart-sorrowing peers. 
That bear this mutual heavy load of moan. 
Now cheer each other in each other's love : 
Though we have spent our harvest of this King, 
We are to reap the harvest of his son. 
The broken rancour of your high-swoln hearts, 
But lately splinter'd, knit, and join'd together, 
Must gently be preserved, cherish'd, and kept : ^^ 

11 " I cry you mercy " is an old phrase for " I ask your pardon." 

12 This passage is touched with a sort of grammatical paralysis, but the 
sense is not very obscure. Their hearts had been swollen high with ran- 



I op KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT II. 

Me seemeth good, that, with some little train, 
Forthwith from Ludlow the young Prince be fet ^^ 
Hither to London, to be crown'd our king. 

Riv. Why with some little train, my Lord of Buckingham ? 

Buck. Marry, my lord, lest, by a multitude, 
The new-heal'd wound of malice should break out ; 
Which would be so much the more dangerous, 
By how much the Estate ^^ is green and yet ungovern'd : 
Where every horse bears his commanding rein. 
And may direct his course as please himself, 
As well the fear of harm as harm apparent,^^ 
In my opinion, ought to be prevented. 

Glos. I hope the King made peace with all of us ; 
And the compdct is firm and true in me. 

Hast. And so in me ; and so, I think, in all : 
Yet, since it is but green, it should be put 
To no apparent Hkelihood of breach. 
Which haply by much company might be urged : . 
Therefore I say with noble Buckingham, 
That it is meet so few should fetch the Prince. 

Stan. And so say I. 

Glos. Then be it so ; and go we to determine 
Who they shall be that straight shall post to Ludlow. — 

cour, but the rancour has been broken out of them ; and as the broken 
parts have been but lately splintered, and knit and joined together, so the 
union must be gently preserved, &c. 

13 Fetxs an old preterite form oi fetch. The poet has it in several other 
instances. — Prince Edward, as Prince of Wales, was in fact living at this 
time under the governance of his maternal uncle, the Earl of Rivers, at Lud- 
low Castle ; his presence being deemed necessary to restrain the Welshmen, 
who were something wild and apt to be disorderly. 

14 " The Estate" here means " the State." In reference to the governing 
part of the Commonwealth, the two words anciently had the same meaning. 

15 Apparent in its old sense of evident or manifest. Repeatedly so. 



SCENE III. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. lOI 

Madam, — and you, my mother, — will you go 
To give your censures ^^ in this business? 

\_Exeunt all but Buckingham and Gloster. 

Buck. My lord, whoever journeys to the Prince, 
For God's sake, let not us two stay at home ; 
For, by the way, I'll sort occasion. 
As index ^'^ to the story we late talk'd of. 
To part the Queen's proud kindred from the Prince. 

Glos. My other self, my counsel's consistory, 
My oracle, my prophet ! my dear cousin, 
I, as a child, will go by thy direction. 
Towards Ludlow then, for we'll not stay behind. {Exeunt. 

Scene III. — The Same. A Street. 
Enter two Citizens, meeting, 

1 Cit. Good morrow, neighbour : whither away so fast ? 

2 Cit. I promise you I scarcely know myself : 
Hear you the news abroad ? 

1 Cit. Yes ; that the King is dead. 

2 Cit. Ill news, by'r Lady ; seldom comes the better : 
I fear, I fear 'twill prove a giddy world. 

Enter a third Citizen. 

J Cit. Neighbours, God speed ! 

I Cit. Give you good morrow, sir. 

16 That is, your judgments, your opinions. See The Winter's Tale, page 
63, note I. 

1''^ The index of a book was formerly set at the beginning ; hence, prob- 
ably, the word came to be used in the sense of opening or introduction. So 
in iv, 4 of this play : " The flattering index of a direful pageant." And in 
Othello, ii. i : " An index and obscure prologue to the history of lust and 
foul thoughts."- — Sort, in the line before, is used for select ox pick. 



I02 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT II. 

J Cit. Doth the news hold of good King Edward's 

death ? 
2 Cit. Ay, sir, it is too true ; God help, the while ! 
J Cit Then, masters, look to see a troublous world. 

1 Cit No, no ; by God's good grace his son shall reign, 
J Cit. Woe to that land that's govern'd by a child ! ^ 

2 Cit. In him there is a hope of government ; 
That, in his nonage. Council under him, 

And, in his full and ripen' d years, himself, 

No doubt, shall then, and till then, govern well.^ 

I Cit. So stood the State when Henry the Sixth 
Was crown'd in Paris but at nine months old. 

J Cit. Stood the State so ? No, no, good friends, God 
wot; 
For then this land was famously enrich'd 
With pohtic grave counsel \ then the King 
Had virtuous uncles to protect his Grace. 

I Cit. Why, so hath this, both by his father and mother. 

J Cit. Better it were they all came by his father, 
Or by his father there were none at all ; 
For emulation now, who shall be nearest, 
Will touch us all too near, if God prevent not. 
O, full of danger is the Duke of Gloster ! 
And the Queen's sons and brothers haught and proud : 
And, were they to be ruled, and not to rule. 
This sickly land might solace as before. 

I Cit. Come, come, we fear the worst ; all will be well. 

1 So in Ecclesiastes, x. i6 : " Woe to thee, O land ! when thy king is a 
child." 

2 We may hope well of his government in all circumstances ; we may 
hope this of his Council while he is in his nonage, and of himself in his 
riper years. 



SCENE IV. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. IO3 

3 Cit When clouds are seen, wise men put on their 
cloaks ; 
When great leaves fall, then Winter is at hand ; 
When the Sun sets, who doth not look for night? 
Untimely storms make men expect a dearth. 
All may be well ; but, if God sort ^ it so, 
'Tis more than we deserve, or I expect. 

2 Cit. Truly, the hearts of men are full of fear : 
You cannot reason '* almost with a man 
That looks not heavily and full of dread. 

J Cit. Before the days of change, still ^ is it so : 
By a divine instinct men's minds mistrust 
Ensuing danger ; as, by proof, we see 
The waters swell before a boisterous storm. 
But leave it all to God. — Whither away? 

2 Cit. Marry, we were sent for to the justices. 

J Cit, And so was I : I'll bear you company. \_Exeunt. 



Scene IV. — The Same. A Room in the Palace. 

Enter the Archbishop of York, the young Duke of York, 
Queen Elizabeth, and the Duchess of York. 

Arch. Last night, I hear, they lay at Northampton ; 
At Stony-Stratford will they be to-night ; 
To-morrow, or next day, they will be here. 

Duch. I long with all my heart to see the Prince \ 
T hope he is much grown since last I saw him. 

3 If God allot or ordain it so. Sort in the Latin sense oisors. 
, 4 Reason, again, for talk or converse. See page 84, note 12. 
5 Still, here, is always, continually. Often so. 



I04 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT n. 

Q, Eliz. But I hear, no ; they say my son of York 
Has almost overta'en him in his growth. 

York. Ay, mother ; but I would not have it so. 

Duch. Why, my young cousin, it is good to grow. 

York. Grandam, one night, as we did sit at supper, 
My uncle Rivers talk'd how I did grow 
More than my brother : Ay, quoth my uncle Gloster, 
Small herbs have grace ^ great weeds do grow apace : 
And since, methinks, I would not grow so fast. 
Because sweet flowers are slow, and weeds make haste. 

Duch. Good faith, good faith, the saying did not hold 
In him that did object the same to thee : 
He was the wretched'st thing when he was young. 
So long a-growing and so leisurely. 
That, if his rule were true, he should be gracious. 

Arch. And so, no doubt, he is, my gracious madam. 

Duch. I hope he is ; but yet let mothers doubt. 

York. Now, by my troth, if I had been remember'd, 
I could have given my uncle's Grace a flout. 
To touch his growth nearer than he touch'd mine. 

Duch. How, my young York ? I pr'ythee, let me hear it. 

York. Marry, they say my uncle grew so fast 
That he could gnaw a crust at two hours old : 
'Twas full two years ere I could get a tooth. 
Grandam, this would have been a biting jest. 

Duch. I pr'ythee, pretty York, who told thee this ? 

York. Grandam, his nurse. 

Duch. His nurse ! why, she was dead ere thou wast bom. 

York. If 'twere not she, I cannot tell who told me. 

Q. Eliz. A parlous ^ boy : — go to, you are too shrewd. 

1 Parlous is a popular form oi perilous ; jocularly used for alarming. 



SCENE IV. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. IO5 

Arch. Good madam, be not angry with the child. 
Q. Eliz. Pitchers have ears. 
Arch. Here comes a messenger. — - 

Enter a Messenger. 

What news ? 

Mess. Such news, my lord, as grieves me to report. 

Q. Eliz. How doth the Prince ? 

Mess. Well, madam, and in health. 

Duch. What is thy news, then? 

Mess. Lord Rivers and Lord Grey are sent to Pomfret, 
With them Sir Thomas Vaughan, prisoners. 

Duch. Who hath committed them ? 
. Mess. The mighty Dukes 

Gloster and Buckingham. 

Q. Eliz. For what offence ? 

Mess. The sum of all I can i have disclosed : 
Why or for what these nobles were committed 
Is all unknown to me, my gracious lady. 

Q. Eliz. Ah me, I see the downfall of our House ! 
The tiger now hath seized the gentle hind ; 
Insulting tyranny begins to jet 
Upon the innocent and awless ^ throne : 
Welcome, destruction, blood, and massacre ! 
I see, as in a map, the end of all. 

Duch. Accursed and unquiet wrangling days, 
How many of you have mine eyes beheld ! 

2 To jet upon means here boldly to encroach upon. So in Titus Androni- 
cus, ii. I : "And think you not how dangerous it is to jet upon a prince's 
right ? " And in an old manuscript play of Sir Thomas More : " It is hard 
when En^glishmens pacience must be thus jetted on by straungers. — Awless 
is unreverenced, not looked upon with awe. 



I06 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT II. 

My husband lost his Hfe to get the crown ; 
And often up and down my sons were toss'd. 
For me to joy and weep their gain and loss : 
And, being seated, and domestic broils 
Clean over-blown, themselves, the conquerors, 
Make war upon themselves ; brother to brother. 
Blood to blood, self against self : O, preposterous 
And frantic outrage, end thy damned spleen ; 
Or let me die, to look on death no more ! 

Q. Eliz. Come, come, my boy ; we will to sanctuary. — 
Madam, farewell. 

Duch. Stay, I will go with you. 

Q. Eliz. You have no cause. 

Arch. \_To the Queen.] My gracious lady, go j 

And thither bear your treasure and your goods. 
For my part, I'll resign unto your Grace 
The seal I keep : and so betide to me 
As well I tender you and all of yours ! 
Come, I'll conduct you to the sanctuary. \Exeunt 



SCENE I. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. lO/ 



ACT III. 

Scene I. — London. A Street 

The trumpets sound. Enter the Prince of Wales, Gloster, 
Buckingham, C<3;r^//z^/ Bourchier,i Catesby, and others. 

Buck. Welcome, sweet Prince, to London, to your cham- 
ber.2 

Glos. Welcome, dear cousin, my thoughts' sovereign : 
The weary way hath made you melancholy. 

Prince. No, uncle ; but our crosses on the way 
Have made it tedious, wearisome, and heavy : 
I want more uncles here to welcome me. 

Glos. Sweet Prince, th' untainted virtue of your years 
Hath not yet dived into the world's deceit ; 
Nor more can you distinguish of a man 
Than of his outward show ; which, God he knows, 
Seldom or never jumpeth ^ with the heart. 
Those uncles which you want were dangerous ; 
Your Grace attended to their sugar'd words. 
But look'd not on the poison of their hearts : 

1 Thomas Bourchier was made a Cardinal, and elected Archbishop of 
Canterbury in 1464. He died in i486. 

2 London was anciently called camera regis, that is, the king's chamber. 
Thus in Buckingham's speech to the citizens as given by More ; " The 
prince, by this noble citie as his speciall chamber, and the speciall well re- 
nowned citie of this realme, much honourable fame receiveth among all 
other nations." 

3 To jump with is to agree or correspond with. So in i King Henry IV., 
i. 2 : " Well, Hal, well ; and in some sort it jumps with my humour." See, 
also, The Merchant, page 129, note 5. 



io8 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT III. 

God keep you from them, and from such false friends ! 
Prince. God keep me from false friends ! but they were 

none. 
Glos. My lord, the Mayor of London comes to greet you. 

Enter the LordM.2iyox and his Train. 

May. God bless your Grace with health and happy days ! 

Prince. I thank you, good my lord; — and thank you 
all. — [Mayor and his Train retire. 

I thought my mother, and my brother York, 
Would long ere this have met us on the way : 
Fie, what a slug is Hastings, that he comes not 
To tell us whether they will come or no ! 

Buck. And, in good time, here comes the sweating lord. 

Enter Hastings. 

Prince. Welcome, my lord : what, will our mother come ? 

Hast. On what occasion, God he knows, not I, 
The Queen your mother, and your brother York, 
Have taken sanctuary : the tender prince 
Would fain have come with me to meet your Grace, 
But by his mother was perforce withheld. 

Buck. Fie, what an indirect and peevish course 
Is this of hers ! — Lord Cardinal, will your Grace 
Persuade the Queen to send the Duke of York 
Unto his princely brother presently? 
If she deny, — Lord Hastings, go with him. 
And from her jealous arms pluck him perforce. 

Card. My Lord of Buckingham, if my weak oratory 
Can from his mother win the Duke of York, 
Anon expect him here ; but, if she be obdiirate 
To mild entreaties, God in Heaven forbid 
We should infringe the holy privilege 



SCENE I. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. lOQ 

Of blessed sanctuary ! not for all this land 
Would I be guilty of so great a sin. 

Buck. You are too senseless-obstinate, my lord, 
Too ceremonious and traditional ; ^ 
Weigh it but with the grossness of this age.^ 
You break not sanctuary in seizing him : 
The benefit thereof is always granted 
To those whose dealings have deserved the place. 
And those who have the wit to claim the place : 
This Prince hath neither claim'd it nor deserved it ; 
Therefore, in mine opinion, cannot have it : 
Then, taking him from thence that is not there. 
You break no privilege nor charter there. 
Oft have I heard of sanctuary-men ; 
But sanctuary-children ne'er till now. 

Card. My lord, you shall o'er-rule my mind for once. — 
Come on. Lord Hastings, will you go with me ? 

Hast I will, my lord. 

Prince. Good lords, make all the speedy haste you may. — 

\_Exeunt Cardinal and Hastings. 
Say, uncle Gloster, if our brother come. 
Where shall we sojourn till our coronation ? 

Glos. Where it seems best unto your royal self. 
If I may counsel you, some day or two 

4 Ceremonious for super stitious, or tenacious of formalities ; traditional 
for adherent to received customs. 

5 Weigh is in the same construction with are in the second line before, 
the copulative and being understood. And to weigh, as the word is here 
used, is Xo judge or to consider. So that the sense of the whole is, " You are 
too much swayed by popular forms and traditions, and you judge the mat- 
ter only in accordance with the gross and undistinguishing superstition 
which now prevails." Such is, in substance, Heath's explanation of the 
passage. See Critical Notes. 



no KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT III, 

Your Highness shall repose you at the Tower ; 
Then where you please, and shall be thought most fit 
For your best health and recreation. 

Prince. I do not like the Tower, of any place. — 
Did Julius Csesar build that place, my lord ? 

Buck. He did, my gracious lord, begin that place ; 
Which, since, succeeding ages have re-edified. 

Prince. Is it upon rec6rd, or else reported 
Successively firom age to age, he built it ? 

Buck. Upon rec6rd, my gracious lord. 

Prince. But say, my lord, it were not register'd, 
Methinks the truth should live fi*om age to age, 
As 'twere retail'd ^ to all posterity. 
Even to the general all-ending day. 

Glos. \^Aside.^ So wise so young, they say, do ne'er live 
long. 

Prince. What say you, uncle ? 

Glos. I say, without characters,''' fame lives long. — 
\_Aside7\ Thus, like the formal Vice,^ Iniquity, 

6 That is, recounted. Minsheu, in his Dictionary, 1617, besides the verb 
retail, in the mercantile sense, has the verb to retaile or retell. Richard 
uses the word again in the fourth Act, when speaking to the Queen of her 
daughter : " To whom I will retail my conquests won." 

7 Without the help of letters or inscriptions. See The Winter's Tale, 
page 159, note 5. 

8 Of that distinguished personage, the Vice or Jester of the old Moralities, 
some account is given in Twelfth Night, p. 119, n. 17. His part appears to 
have been on all occasions much the same, consisting in a given round or 
set form of action ; for which cause, probably, the epithet formal is here 
applied to him. The following is Gifford's description of him : " He ap- 
pears to have been a perfect counterpart of the harlequin of the modern 
stage, and had a twofold office, — to instigate the hero of the piece to wick- 
edness, and at the same time to protect him from the Devil, whom he was 
permitted to buffet and baffle with his wooden sword, till the process of the 
story required that both the protector and the protected should be carried 



SCENE I. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. Ill 

I moralize two meanings in one word.^ 

Prince. That Julius Caesar was a famous man ; 
With what his valour did enrich his wit, 
His wit set down to make his valour live : 
Death makes no conquest of this conqueror ; 
For now he lives in fame, though not in life. — 
I'll tell you what, my cousin Buckingham, — 

Buck, What, my gracious lord ? 

Prince. An if I live until I be a man, 
I'll win our ancient right in France again. 
Or die a soldier, as I lived a king. 

Glos. \_Aside^ Short Summers lightly i*^ have a forward 
Spring. 

Buck. Now, in good time, here comes the Duke of York. 

Enter York, with the Cardinal and Hastings. 

Prince. Richard of York ! how fares our loving brother ? 
York. Well, my dread lord ; so must I call you now. 
Prince. Ay, brother, — to our grief, as it is yours : 



off by the fiend ; or the latter driven roaring from the stage, by some 
miraculous interposition in favour of the repentant offender." 

9 Heath explains as follows : " Thus my moralities, or the sententious 
expressions I have just uttered, resemble those of the Vice, Iniquity, in the 
play ; the indecencies which lie at the bottom are sheltered from exception 
and the indignation they would excite if nakedly delivered, under the am- 
biguity of a double meaning." The writer adds, " The term moralize is 
only introduced in allusion to the title of our old dramatic pieces, which 
were commonly called Moralities, in which the Vice was always one of the 
shining characters." It is to be noted further, that, as the Vice acted the 
part of a buffoon or jester, he was wont " to deal largely in double mean- 
ings, and by the help of them to aim at cracking a jest or raising a laugh." 

10 Lightly, here, is commonly or usually. So in an old proverb preserved 
by Ray : "There's lightning lightly before thunder." 



112 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT III. 

Too late ^i he died that might have kept that title, 
Which by his death hath lost much majesty. 

Glos. How fares our cousin, noble Lord of York? 

York. I thank you, gentle uncle. O, my lord, 
You said that idle weeds are fast in growth : 
The Prince my brother hath outgrown me far. 

Glos. He hath, my lord. 

York. And therefore is he idle? 

Glos. O, my fair cousin, I must not say so. 

York. Then is he more beholding to you than I. 

Glos. He may command me as my sovereign ; 
But you have power in me as in a kinsman. 

York. I pray you, uncle, give me this dagger. 

Glos. My dagger, little cousin? with all my heart. 

Prince. A beggar, brother ? 

York. Of my kind uncle, that I know will give ; 
And being but a toy, which is no grief to give. 

Glos. A greater gift than that I'll give my cousin. 

York. A greater gift ! O, that's the sword to it. 

Glos. Ay, gentle cousin, were it light enough. 

York. O, then, I see you'll part but with light gifts ; 
In weightier things you'll say a beggar nay. 

Glos. It is too heavy for your Grace to wear. 

York. I'd weigh it lightly, were it heavier.^^ 

Glos. What, would you have my weapon, little lord ? 

York. I would, that I might thank you, as — as — you call 
me. 



11 Too late for too lately ; meaning, it is too short a time since his death, 
not to be " to our grief, as it is yours." 

12 York is playing on the word lightly, and means, in one sense, " I hold 
it cheap," or " I care little for it." So in Loves Labours Lost, v. 2 : " You 
weigh me not ! — O, that's you care not for me." 



SCENE I. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. II 3 

Glos. How ? 

York, Little. 

Prince. My Lord of York will still be cross ^^ in talk : 
Uncle, your Grace knows how to bear with him. 

York. You mean, to bear me, not to bear with me : — 
Uncle, my brother mocks both you and me ; 
Because that I am little, like an ape,!^ 
He thinks that you should bear me on your shoulders. 

Buck. {Aside to Hastings.] With what a sharp -provided 
wit he reasons ! ^^ 
To mitigate the scorn he gives his uncle. 
He prettily and aptly taunts himself: 
So cunning and so young is wonderful. 

Glos. My lord, will't please you pass along? 
Myself and my good cousin Buckingham 
Will to your mother, to entreat of her 
To meet you at the Tower and welcome you. 

York. What, will you go unto the Tower, my lord ? 

Prince. My Lord Protector needs will have it so. 

York. I shall not sleep in quiet at the Tower. 

Glos. Why, what should you fear? 

York. Marry, my uncle Clarence' angry ghost : 
My grandam told me he was murder'd there. 



13 Cross in a logical sense, not in a moral ; opposing, or speaking at cross' 
purposes ; taking him in a wrong sense. 

14 York alludes to the hump on Gloster's back, which was commodious 
for carrying burdens. So in Ulpian Fulwell's Ars Adulandi, 1576 : " Thou 
hast an excellent dack to carry my lord's ape." 

15 Provided seems to mea.n furnished, pregnant, prompt ; or it may be an 
instance of the passive form with an active sense, forecasting, provident. 
We have the former sense in well-provided, which means well-furnished or 
well-supplied. — Here, again, reasons has the sense, apparently, of talks or 
converses. See page 103, note 4. 



1 14 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IIL 

Prince. I fear no uncles dead. 

Glos. Nor none that live, I hope. 

Prince. An if they live, I hope I need not fear. 
But come, my lord ; and with a heavy heart. 
Thinking on them, go I unto the Tower. 

\Sennet. Exeunt the Prince, York, Hastings, Cardinal, 
and others ; also the Lord Mayor and his Trains 

Buck. Think you, my lord, this little prating York 
Was not incensed by his subtle mother 
To taunt and scorn you thus opprobriously ? 

Glos. No doubt, no doubt : O, 'tis a parlous boy ; 
Bold, quick, ingenious, forward, capable : 
He's all the mother's, from the top to toe. 

Buck. Well, let them rest. — Come hither, Catesby. Thou 
Art sworn as deeply to effect what we intend 
As closely to conceal what we impart : 
Thou know'st our reasons urged upon the way : 
What think'st thou ? is it not an easy matter 
To make William Lord Hastings of our mind, 
For the instalment of this noble duke 
In the seat royal of this famous isle ! 

Cate. He for his father's sake so loves the Prince, 
That he will not be won to aught against him. 

Buck. What think'st thou, then, of Stanley ? will not he ? 

Cate. He will do all in all as Hastings doth. 

Buck. Well, then no more but this : go, gentle Catesby, 
And, as it were far off, sound thou Lord Hastings, 
How he doth stand affected to our purpose ; 
And summon him to-morrow to the Tower, 
To sit about the coronation. 
If thou dost find him tractable to us. 
Encourage him, and show him all our reasons : 



SCENE I. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. II 5 

If he be leaden, icy-cold, unwilling, 
Be thou so too ; and so break off your talk, 
And give us notice of his inclination : 
For we to-morrow hold divided Councils, 
Wherein thyself shalt highly be employ'd. 

Glos. Commend me to Lord William : tell him, Catesby, 
His ancient knot of dangerous adversaries 
To-morrow are let blood at Pomfret- castle ; 
And bid my friend, for joy of this good news. 
Give Mistress Shore one gentle kiss the more. 

Buck. Good Catesby, go, effect this business soundly. 

Cate. My good lords both, with all the heed I can. 

Glos. Shall we hear from you, Catesby, ere we sleep ? 

Cate. You shall, my lord. 

Glos. At Crosby-place, there shall you find us both. 

{Exit Catesby 

Buck. My lord, what shall we do, if we perceive 
Lord Hastings will not yield to our complots ? 

Glos. Chop off his head, man : somewhat we will do : 
And, look, when I am king, claim thou of me 
Th' earldom of Hereford, and the movables 
Whereof the King my brother stood possess'd. 

Buck. I'll claim that promise at your Grace's hand. 

Glos. And look to have it yielded with all kindness. 
Come, let us sup betimes, that afterwards 
We may digest our complots in some form. 



1 16 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IIL 

Scene II. — Before Lord Hastings' House, 

Enter a Messenger. 

Mess. \Knocking7\ My lord ! my lord ! — 

Hast. [ Within^ Who knocks ? 

Mess. One from the Lord Stanley. 

Hast. {Within?^ What is't o'clock? 

Mess. Upon the stroke of four. 

Enter Hastings. 

Hast. Cannot thy master sleep these tedious nights ? 

Mess. So it appears by that I have to say. 
First, he commends him to your noble self. 

Hast. What then? 

Mess. Then certifies your lordship, that this night 
He dreamt the boar had rased ^ off his helm : 
Besides, he says there are two Councils held ; 
And that may be determined at the one 
Which may make you and him to rue at th' other. 
Therefore he sends to know your lordship's pleasure. 
If presently you will take horse with him. 
And with all speed post with him toward the North, 
To shun the danger that his soul divines. 

Hast. Go, fellow, go, return unto thy lord ; 
Bid him not fear the separated Councils : 
His Honour and myself are at the one, 

1 Rased or rashed was a term commonly used to describe the violence 
inflicted by a boar. Nott derives it from Arracher, French, to root up, to 
draw, tear, ox pull up. So in The Faerie Queene, v. 3, 8 : 

There Marinell great deeds of armes did shew ; 
And through the thickest like a lyon flew, 
Rushing off kelmes, and ryving plates asonder. 



SCENE II. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 11/ 

And at the other is my good friend Catesby ; 
Where nothing can proceed that toucheth us 
Whereof I shall not have intelligence. 
Tell him his fears are shallow, wanting instance : ^ 
And for his dreams, I wonder he's so fond^ 
To trust the mockery of unquiet slumbers : 
To fly the boar before the boar pursues, 
Were to incense the boar to follow us. 
And make pursuit where he did mean no chase. 
Go, bid thy master rise and come to me ; 
And we will both together to the Tower, 
Where he shall see the boar^ will use us kindly. 

Mess. I'll go, my lord, and tell him what you say. {Exit- 
En ter Catesby. 

Cate. Many good morrows to my noble lord ! 

Hast. Good morrow, Catesby ; you are early stirring : 
What news, what news, in this our tottering State ?. 

Cate. It is a reeling world, indeed, my lord ; 
And I believe will never stand upright 
Till Richard wear the garland of the realm. 

Hast. How ! wear the garland ! dost thou mean the 
crown ? 

Cate. Ay, my good lord. 

Hast I'll have this crown of mine cut from my shoulders 
Before I'll see the crown so foul misplaced. 

2 Without example, or without any matter-of-fact, to instance, or allege in 
proof. So in The Merry Wives, ii. 2, Ford says of his wife, " Now, could I 
come to her with any detection in my hand, my desires had instance and 
argument to commend themselves." 

3 Fond, here, as usual, is foolish, or weak. 

* Of course the boar is Richard, whose crest was adorned with the figure 
of that amiable beast. 



Il8 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT III 

But canst thou guess that he doth aim at it ? 

Caie. Ay, on my life ; and hopes to find you forward 
Upon his party for the gain thereof : 
And thereupon he sends you this good news, 
That this same very day your enemies. 
The kindred of the Queen, must die at Pomfret. 

Hast. Indeed, I am no mourner for that news. 
Because they have been still my adversaries : 
But, that I'll give my voice on Richard's side, 
To bar my master's heirs in true descent, 
God knows I will not do it to the death. 

Cate. God keep your lordship in that gracious mind ! 

Hast, But I shall laugh at this a twelve-month hence, 
That they who brought me in my master's hate, 
I live to look upon their tragedy. 
Well, Catesby, ere a fortnight make me older, 
I'll send some packing that yet think not on't. 

Cate. Tis a vile thing to die, my gracious lord, 
When men are unprepared and look not for it. 

Hast. O monstrous, monstrous ! and so falls it out 
With Rivers, Vaughan, Grey : and so 'twill do 
With some men else, that think themselves as safe 
As thou and I ; who, as thou know'st, are dear 
To princely Richard and to Buckingham. 

Cate. The princes both make high account of you, — 
\Asider^ For they account his head upon the bridge. 

Hast. I know they do ; and I have well deserved it — 

Enter Stanley. 

Come on, come on j where is your boar-spear, man ? 
Fear you the boar, and go so unprovided? 

Stan. My lord, good morrow ; — good morrow, Catesby ; — 



SCENE II. 



KING RICHARD THE THIRD. I IQ 



You may jest on, but, by the holy Rood,^ 
I do not like these several Councils, I. 

Hast. My lord, I hold my life as dear as you. do yours j 
And never in my days, I do protest. 
Was it more precious to me than 'tis now : 
Think you, but that I know our state secure, 
I would be so triumphant as I am ? 

Stan. The lords at Pomfret, when they rode from London, 
Were jocund, and supposed their states were sure ; 
And they, indeed, had no cause to mistrust ; 
But yet, you see, how soon the day o'ercast. 
This sudden stab of rancour I misdoubt : 
Pray God, I say, I prove a needless coward 1^ 
What, shall we toward the Tower? the day is spent. 

Hast. Come, come, have with you. Wot you what, my 
lord? 
To-day the lords you talk of are beheaded. 

Stan. They, for their truth, might better wear their heads 
Than some that have accused them wear their hats. 
But come, my lord, let us away. 

Enter a Pursuivant.'' 

Hast. Go on before; I'll talk with this good fellow. — 

[^Exeunt Stanley and Catesby. 
How now, sirrah ! how goes the world with thee.? 

5 " The holy Rood" is the cross or crucifix. A frequent oath. 

6 To " prove a needless coward " here means, evidently, to prove a cow- 
ard needlessly or without cause. Shakespeare has many instances of like 
construction. 

7 A pursuivant is now a State messenger, or one having authority to 
execute warrants : the word formerly meant a junior ofificer of the Heralds' 
College. In More's history this Pursuivant is spoken of as being also 
named Hastings- 



I20 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IIL 

Purs. The better that your lordship please to ask. 

Hast. I tell thee, man, 'tis better with me now 
Than when thou mett'st me last where now we meet : 
Then was I going prisoner to the Tower, 
By the suggestion of the Queen's allies ; 
But now, I tell thee — keep it to thyself — 
This day those enemies are put to death. 
And I in better state than e'er I was. 

Purs. God hold it,® to your Honour's good content ! 

Hast. Gramercy, fellow : there, drink that for me. 

\Thr owing him his purse. 

Purs. God save your lordship ! \_Exit. 

Enter a Priest. 

Priest. Well met, my lord ; I'm glad to see your Honour. 

Hast. I thank thee, good Sir John, with all my heart. 
I'm in your debt for your last exercise ; ^ 
Come the next Sabbath, and I will content you. 

Enter Buckingham. 

Buck. What, talking with a priest, Lord Chamberlain ! 
Your friends at Pomfret, they do need the priest ; 
Your Honour hath no shriving-work ^^ in hand. 

Hast. Good faith, and when I met this holy man. 
The men you talk of came into my mind. 
What, go you toward the Tower? 



8 " God hold it " is God continue it. — Gramercy, in the next line, is great 
thanks ; from the French grand merci. 

9 Exercise here probably means religious instruction. — Sir was in com- 
mon use as a clerical title. Thus we have Sir Oliver Martext in As You 
Like It, and Sir Hugh Evans in The Merry Wives of Windsor. 

10 Shriving or shrift is an old word for confession and absolution. 



SCENE III. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. I2l 

Buck. I do, my lord ; but long I cannot stay there : 
I shall return before your lordship thence. 

Hast. Nay, like enough, for I stay dinner there. 

Buck. \_Aside?^ And supper too, although thou know'st it 
not. — 
Come, will you go ? 

Hast. I'll wait upon your lordship. \_Exeunt. 

Scene III. — Pom/ret. Before the Castle. 

Enter Ratcliff, with a Guard, conducting Rivers, Grey, 
and Vaughan to Execution. 

Riv. Sir Richard Ratcliff, let me tell thee this, 
To-day shalt thou behold a subject die 
For truth, for duty, and for loyalty. 

Grey. God keep the Prince from all the pack of you ! 
A knot you are of damned blood-suckers. 

Vaugh. You live that shall cry woe for this hereafter. 

Rat. Dispatch ; the limit ^ of your lives is out. 

Riv. O Pomfret, Pomfret ! O thou bloody prison, 
Fatal and ominous to noble peers ! 
Within the guilty closure of thy walls 
Richard the Second here was hack'd to death ; 
And, for more slander to thy dismal seat. 
We give thee up our guiltless blood to drink. 

Grey. Now Margaret's curse is fall'n upon our heads. 
When she exclaim'd on Hastings, you, and I, 
For standing by when Richard stabb'd her son. 

1 Limit, here, is equivalent to appointed time ; to appoint being one of the 
old meanings of to limit. So in Measure for Measure, iii. i : " Between 
which time of the contract and limit of the solemnity," &c. 



122 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT III. 

Riv, Then cursed she Richard, then cursed she Bucking- 
ham, 

Then cursed she Hastings : — O, remember, God, 

To hear her prayers for them, as now for us ! 

And, for my sister and her princely sons. 

Be satisfied, dear God, with our true blood. 

Which, as Thou know'st, unjustly must be spilt. 
Rat. Make haste ; the hour of death is expirate .^ 
Riv. Come, Grey, — come, Vaughan, — let us here em- 
brace : 

Farewell, until we meet again in Heaven. \Exeunt, 

Scene IV. — London. A Room in the Tower. 

Buckingham, Stanley, Hastings, the Bishop of Ely,^ Rat- 
cliff, LovEL, and others.^ sitting at a table ; Officers of the 
Council attending. 

Hast. Now, noble peers, the cause why we are met 
Is, to determine of the coronation. 
In God's name, speak ; when is the royal day ? 

Buck. Are all things ready for that royal time ? 

Stan. They are ; and wants but nomination.^ 

Ely. To-morrow, then, I judge a happy ^ day. 

2 Expirate for expirated, that is, expired. So, before, convict for con- 
victed. See page 85, note 14. 

3 Dr. John Morton, who was elected to the see of Ely in 1478. He was 
advanced to the see of Canterbury in i486, and appointed Lord Chancellor 
in 1487. He died in the year 1500. This prelate first devised the scheme 
of putting an end to the long contest between the Houses of York and Lan- 
caster, by a marriage between Henry Earl of Richmond and Elizabeth, the 
eldest daughter of Edward IV. ; and was a principal agent in bringing that 
arrangement about. 

4 And there wants or is wanting but a naming of the time. 

5 Happy here means auspicious, the same as the Ijs.MiXi felix. 



SCENE IV. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 1 23 

Buck. Who knows the Lord Protector's mind herein? 
Who is most inward ^ with the noble duke ? 

Ely. Your Grace, we think, should soonest know his mind. 

Buck. We know each other's faces : for our hearts, 
He knows no more of mine than I of yours ; 
Nor I of his, my lord, than you of mine. -^ 
Lord Hastings, you and he are near in love. 

Hast. I thank his Grace, I know he loves me well ; 
But, for his purpose in the coronation, 
I have not sounded him, nor he deliver'd 
His gracious pleasure any way therein : 
But you, my noble lords, may name the time ; 
And in the duke's behalf I'll give my voice, 
Which, I presume, he'll take in gentle part. 

Ely. In happy time, here comes the duke himself. 

Enter Gloster. 

Glos. My noble lords and cousins all, good morrow. 
I have been long a sleeper : but, I trust. 
My absence doth neglect no great design. 
Which by my presence might have been concluded. 

Buck. Had you not come upon your cue,''' my lord, 
Wilham Lord Hastings had pronounced your part, — 
I mean, your voice, — for crowning of the King. 

Glos. Than my Lord Hastings no man might be bolder ; 
His lordship knows me well, and loves me well. — 
My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn, 

6 Inward^ as here used, is intimate or confidential. The same word oc- 
curs as a substantive with the same sense in Measure for Measure, iii. 2: 
" Sir, I was an inward of his." 

■^ An expression borrowed from the stage : the cue, queue, or tail of a 
speech ,being the last words, and so indicating to the next speaker when to 
take his turn. 



124 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT in. 

I saw good strawberries in your garden there : 
I do beseech you send for some of them.^ 

Ely. Marry, and will, my lord, with all my heart. \_Exit 

Glos. Cousin of Buckingham, a word with you. 

\_Takes him aside^ 
Catesby hath sounded Hastings in our business. 
And finds the testy gentleman so hot, 
That he will lose his head ere give consent 
His master's child, as worshipfully he terms it. 
Shall lose the royalty of England's throne. 

Buck. Withdraw you hence, my lord ; I'll follow you. 

\_Exif Gloster, followed by Buckingham. 

Stan. We have not yet set down this day of triumph. 
To-morrow, in my judgment, is too sudden ; 
For I myself am not so well provided 
As else I would be, were the day prolong'd. 

Re-enter the Bishop of Ely. 

Ely. Where is my lord the Duke of Gloster ? 
I have sent for these strawberries. 

Hast. His Grace looks cheerfully and smooth to-day ; 
There's some conceit or other likes ^ him well, 

8 This easy affability and smoothness of humour when going about the 
blackest and bloodiest crimes is one of the most telling strokes in this ter- 
rible portrait. The incident is thus related in the History : " These lords so 
sitting togither communing of this matter, the protector came in amongst 
them first about nine of the clocke, saluting them courteouslie, and excusing 
himselfe that had been from them so long, saieng merilie that he had beene 
a sleeper that dale. After a little talking with them he said unto the bishop 
of Elie, My lord, you have verie good strawberies at your garden in Hol- 
borne ; I require you, let us have a messe of them. Gladlie, my lord, quoth 
he ; would God I had some better thing as readie to your pleasure as that ! 
And therewithal! in all hast he sent his servant for a messe of strawberies." 

9 Some thought or conception that pleases him well. Conceit is generally 
so in old writers, and likes very often so. 



SCENE IV. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 12$ 

When he doth bid good-morrow with such spirit. 
I think there's ne'er a man in Christendom 
Can lesser hide his love or hate than he ; 
For by his face straight shall you know his heart. 

Stan. What of his heart perceive you in his face 
By any likelihood he show'd to-day ? 

Hast. Marry, that with no man here he's offended ; 
For, were he, he had shown it in his looks. 

Re-enter Gloster and Buckingham. 

Glos. I pray you all, tell me what they deserve 
That do conspire my death with devilish plots 
Of damned witchcraft, and that have prevail'd 
Upon my body with their hellish charms ? 

Hast. The tender love I bear your Grace, my lord, 
Makes me most forward in this noble presence 
To doom th' offenders : whosoe'er they be, 
I say, my lord, they have deserved death. 

Glos. Then be your eyes the witness of their evil : 
Look how I am bewitch'd ; behold mine arm 
Is, like a blasted sapling, wither'd up : 
And this is Edward's wife, that monstrous witch. 
Consorted with that harlot-woman Shore, 
That by their witchcraft thus have marked me. 

Hast. If they have done this thing, my gracious lord, — - 

Glos. If ! thou protector of this damned harlot, 
Talk'st thou to me of ifs ? Thou art a traitor : — 
Off with his head ! now, by Saint Paul, I swear 
I will not dine until I see the same. — 
Lovel and Ratcliff,io look that it be done : — 

1" In, the preceding scene, we have Ratcliff at Pomfret, conducting Rivers, 
Grey, and Vaughan to death ; yet the events of that scene and this are rep- 



126 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT III. 

The rest, that love me, rise and follow me. 

\_Exeunt all but Hastings, Lovel, and Ratcliff. 

Hast. Woe, woe for England ! not a whit for me ; 
For I, too fond, might have prevented this. 
. Stanley did dream the boar did rase his helm ; 
But I disdain'd it, and did scorn to fly : 
Three times to-day my foot-cloth horse ^^ did stumble, 
And started when he look'd upon the Tower, 
As loth to bear me to the slaughter-house. 
O, now I need the priest that spake to me : 
I now repent I told the pursuivant. 
As too triiimphing, how mine enemies 
To-day at Pomfret bloodily were butcher'd. 
And I myself secure in grace and favour. — 
O Margaret, Margaret, now thy heavy curse 
Is lighted on poor Hastings' wretched head ! 

Rat. Dispatch, my lord ; the duke would be at dinner : 
Make a short shrift ; he longs to see your head. 

Hast. O momentary grace of mortal men, 
Which we more hunt for than the grace of God ! 
Who builds his hope in air of your fair looks. 
Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast, 
Ready, with every nod, to tumble down 
Into the fatal bowels of the deep. 

Lov. Come, come, dispatch ; 'tis bootless to exclaim. 

resented as occurring the same day. Knight thinks " this is one of those 
positions in which the Poet has trusted to the imagination of his audience 
rather than to their topographical knowledge." It may be so, but it seems 
to me much more likely to have been a simple oversight on the Poet's part. 
11 K foot-cloth was a kind of housing that covered the body of the horse, 
and reached nearly to the ground, h. foot-cloth horse was a palfrey covered 
with such housings, used for state ; and was the usual mode of conveyance 
for the rich, at a period when carriages were unknown. 



SCENE V. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 12/ 

Hast. O bloody Richard ! — miserable England ! 
I prophesy the fearfull'st time to thee 
That ever wretched age hath look'd upon. — 
Come, lead me to the block ; bear him my head : 
They smile at me who shortly shall be dead.^^ \_Exeunt 



Scene V. — The Same. The Tower-walls. 

Enter Gloster and Buckingham, in rusty armour, marvel- 
lous ill-favoured. 

Glos. Come, cousin, canst thou quake, and change thy 
colour, 
Murder thy breath in middle of a word, 
And then begin again, and stop again. 
As if thou wert distraught ^ and mad with terror ? 

Buck. Tut, I can counterfeit the deep tragedian ; 
Speak and look back, and pry on every side, 
Tremble and start at wagging of a straw. 
Intending 2 deep suspicion : ghastly looks 
Are at my service, like enforced smiles ; 
And both are ready in their offices. 
At any time, to grace my stratagems. 

12 William Lord Hastings was beheaded on the 13th of June, 1483. His 
eldest son by Catharine Neville, daughter of Richard Neville, Earl of Salis- 
bury, and widow of William Lord Bonville,was restored to his honours and 
estate by King Henry VII. in the first year of his reign. 

1 Distraught is an old form of distracted. 

2 Intend is repeatedly used by Shakespeare for pretend. So, again, in 
the seventh scene of this Act : " Intend some fear." Also, in Lucrece : " For 
then is Tarquin brought unto his bed, intending wesLviness with heavy sprite." 
On the other hand, the Poet repeatedly has pretend and its derivatives in 
the sense of intend. See, also. Much Ado, page 56, note 2. 



128 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT Hi. 

Bat what, is Catesby gone ? 

Glos. He is ; and, see, he brings the Mayor along. 
Buck. Let me alone to entertain him. — 

Enter the Lord Mayor and Catesby. 

Lord Mayor, — 
Glos. Look to the drawbridge there ! 

Buck. Hark ! a drum. 

Glos. Catesby, o'erlook the walls. 

Buck. Lord Mayor, the reason we have sent for you, — 

Glos. Look back, defend thee ; here are enemies. 

Buck. God and our innocence defend and guard us ! 

Glos. Be patient, they are friends, Ratcliff and Lovel. 

Enter Lovel and Ratcliff, with Hastings' head. 

Lov. Here is the head of that ignoble traitor. 
The dangerous and unsuspected Hastings. 

Glos. So dear I loved the man, that I must weep. 
I took him for the plainest harmless creature 
That breathed upon the Earth a Christian ; 
Made him my book, wherein my soul recorded 
The history of all her secret thoughts : 
So smooth he daub'd^ his vice with show of virtue. 
That, his apparent open guilt omitted, — 
I mean, his conversation"* with Shore's wife, — 
He lived from all attainder of suspect.^ 

Buck. Well, well, he was the covert'st shelter'd traitor 

3 To daub was used for to disguise, to cover over. So in King Lear, iv, i ; 
' I cannot daub it further." 

4 Familiar intercourse ; what is now called criminal conversation. — • 
Apparent, again, in the sense of manifest. See page loo, note 15. 

5 Suspect for suspicion. So, before, in i. 3 : " You do me shameful injury, 
falsely to draw me in these vile suspects." 



SCENE V. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 1 29 

That ever lived. — 

Would you imagine, or almost believe, — - 

Were't not that, by great preservation. 

We live to tell it you, — the subtle traitor 

This day had plotted, in the Council-house, 

To murder me and my good Lord of Gloster ? 

May. What, had he so ? 

Glos. What, think you we are Turks or infidels ? 
Or that we would, against the form of law. 
Proceed thus rashly in the villain's death. 
But that the Extreme peril of the case, 
The peace of England and our persons' safety. 
Enforced us to this execution ? 

May. Now, fair befall you ! he deserved his death ; 
And your good Graces both have well proceeded. 
To warn false traitors from the like attempts. 
I never look'd for better at his hands. 
After he once fell in with Mistress Shore. 

Buck. Yet had we not determined he should die. 
Until your lordship came to see his end ; 
Which now the loving haste of these our friends. 
Somewhat against our meaning, have ^ prevented ; 
Because, my lord, we would have had you hear 
The traitor speak, and timorously confess 
The manner and the purpose of his treason ; 
That you might well have signified the same 
Unto the citizens, who haply may 
Misconstrue us in him, and wail his death. 

May. But, my good lord, your Grace's word shall serve, 

6 Properly it should be has. But the old writers have many such iiv 
stances where the verb is made to agree with the nearest substantive, as 
with, friends here, instead of its proper subject. 



130 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT III. 

As well as I had seen, and heard him speak ; 
And do not doubt, right noble princes both, 
But I'll acquaint our duteous citizens 
With all your just proceedings in this case. 

Glos. And to that end we wish'd your lordship here, 
T' avoid the censures of the carping world. 

Buck. But since you come too late of '^ our intent. 
Yet witness what you hear we did intend : 
And so, my good Lord Mayor, we bid farewell. 

\_Exit Lord Mayor. 

Glos. Go, after, after, cousin Buckingham. 
The Mayor towards Guildhall hies him in all post ; 
There, at your meetest vantage of the time, 
Infer s the bastardy of Edward's children : 
Tell them how Edward put to death a citizen, 
Only for saying he would make his son 
Heir to the crown ; meaning, indeed, his house, 
Which, by the sign thereof, was termed so.^ 
Moreover, urge his hateful luxury. 
And bestial appetite in change of lust ; 
Which stretch'd unto their servants, daughters, wives. 
Even where his raging eye or savage heart. 
Without control, listed to make a prey. 

Buck. Doubt not, my lord, I'll play the orator 

7 In common speech a similar phrase is used, " to come short of a. thing." 

8 Infer is here used in the sense of introduce or bring forward ; one of 
its Latin senses. So in iv. 4, of this play : " Infer fair England's peace by 
this alliance." 

9 This person was one Walker, a substantial citizen and grocer, at the 
Crown in Cheapside. These topics of Edward's cruelty, lust, unlawful mar- 
riage, &c., are enlarged upon in that most extraordinary invective, the peti- 
tion presented to Richard before his accession, which was afterwards turned 
into an Act of Parliamente 



SCENE V. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. I3I 

As if the golden fee for which I plead 
Were for myself : and so, my lord, adieu. 

Glos. If you thrive well, bring them to. Baynard's Castle ; i<^ 
Where you shall find me well accompanied 
With reverend fathers and well-learned bishops. 

Buck. I go ; and towards three or four o'clock 
Look for the news that the Guildhall affords. \_Exit. 

Glos. Go, Lovel, with all speed to Doctor Shaw, — 
\To Gate.] Go thou to Friar Penker : ^^ — bid them both 
Meet me within this hour at Baynard's Castle. — 

[_Exeunf Lovel, Catesby, and Ratcliff. 
Now will I in, to take some privy order, 
To draw the brats of Clarence out of sight ; 
And to give notice that no manner person ^^ 
Have any time recourse unto the Princes. \_Exif. 

10 This castle was built by Baynard, a nobleman who is said to have come 
in with William the Conqueror. It stood on the bank of the river in 
Thames-street, but has been swept away by the commercial necessities of 
London. 

11 Dr. Shaw was brother to the Lord Mayor; Penker, according to 
Speed, was provincial of the Augustine friars; and both were popular 
preachers of the time. 

12 The expression " no manner person " is according to the idiom of the 
time. — " The brats of Clarence " were Edward and Margaret, known after- 
wards as Earl of Warwick and Countess of Salisbury. 



132 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT III. 

Scene VI. — The Same. A Street. 

Enter a Scrivener. 1 

Scriv. Here is th' indictment of the good Lord Hastings ) 
Which in a set hand fairly is engross 'd,^ 
That it may be to-day read o'er in Paul's. 
And mark how well the sequel hangs together : 
Eleven hours I have spent to write it over, 
For yesternight by Catesby was it sent me ; 
The precedent ^ was full as long a-doing : 
And yet within these five hours Hastings lived, 
Untainted, unexamined, free, at liberty. 
Here's a good world the while ! Why, who's so gross 
That cannot see this palpable device ? 
Yet who so bold but says he sees it not ? 
Bad is the world ; and all will come to naught 
When such ill deahng must be seen in thought.^ \_Exit. 

1 A scrivener is, literally, a writer or a scribe. The term was applied to 
a class of men whose special business it was to draw up or to transcribe 
legal writings and instruments. 

2 To engross, as the word is here used, is to copy legal or other docu- 
ments in a clear, legible hand for public use. — In the olden time, St. Paul's 
Cathedral was used as a sort of exchange, and all sorts of notices were 
posted there for the public eye. The edifice was not used in Shakespeare's 
time, it having been set on fire by a stroke of lightning and the roof burnt 
off early in Elizabeth's reign. The present St. Paul's was not built till the 
time of Charles the Second. 

3 The original draft from which the copy was made. 

4 " Seen in thought is seen in silence." — I am not certain whether the last 
word of the preceding line should be nought or naught. With the latter, the 
sense is about the same as in our phrase of " going to the bad." See page 
50, note 17. 



SCENE VII. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. I33 

Scene VII. — The Same. Cornet of Baynard^s Castle. 
Enter Gloster and Buckingham, meeting. 

Glos. How now, how now ! what say the citizens ? 

Buck. Now, by the holy Mother of our Lord, 
The citizens are mum, say not a word. 

Glos. Touch'd you the bastardy of Edward's children ? 

Buck. I did ; with his contract with Lady Lucy,^ 
And his contract by deputy in France ; 
Th' insatiate greediness of his desires ; 
His tyranny for trifles ; his own bastardy : ^ 
Withal I did infer "^ your Hneaments, 
Being the right idea ^ of your father. 
Both in your form and nobleness of mind ; 
Laid open all your victories in Scotland, 
Your discipline in war, wisdom in peace, 
Your bounty, virtue, fair humility ; 
Indeed, left nothing fitting for the purpose 
Untouch'd, or slightly handled, in discourse : 



5 The King had been familiar with this lady before his marriage with the 
present Queen, to obstruct which his mother alleged a precontract between 
them. But Elizabeth Lucy, being sworn to speak the truth, declared that 
the King had not been affianced to her. Edward, however, had been mar- 
ried to Lady Eleanor Butler, widow of Lord Butler of Sudley, and daughter 
to the great Earl of Shrewsbury. On this ground his children were de- 
clared illegitimate by the only Parliament convened by Richard ; but nothing 
was said of Elizabeth Lucy. 

6 This tale is supposed to have been first propagated by the Duke of 
Clarence when he obtained a settlement of the crown on himself and his 
issue after the death of Henry VI. Sir Thomas More says that the Duke 
of Gloster, soon after Edward's death, revived this scandal. 

7 Infer again as explained in note 8, page 130. 

8 Idea is here used in the right classic sense of image or likeness. 



134 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT III. 

And, when my oratory drew toward end, 

I bade them that did love their country's good 

Cry, God save Richard, England'' s royal King! 

Glos. And did they so ? 

Buck. No, so God help me, they spake not a word ; 
But, like dumb statuas ^ or breathing stones, 
Stared each on other, and look'd deadly pale. 
Which when I saw, I reprehended them ; 
And ask'd the Mayor what meant this wilful silence : 
His answer was, The people were not used 
To be spoke to but by the recorder. 
Then he was urged to tell my tale again : 
Thus saith the duke, thus hath the duke inferred; 
But nothing spake in warrant from himself. 
When he had done, some followers of mine own. 
At lower end o' the hall, hurl'd up their caps, 
And some ten voices cried, God save King Richard! 
And thus I took the vantage of those few : 
Thanks, gentle citizens and friends, quoth I ; 
This general applause and cheerful shout 
Argues your wisdom and your love to Richard : 
And even here brake off, and came away. 

Glos. What tongueless blocks were they ! would they not 
speak ? 

Buck. No, by my troth, my lord. 

Glos. Will not the Mayor, then, and his brethren, come ? 

Buck. The Mayor is here at hand. Intend some fear ; 
Be not you spoke with but by mighty suit : 
And look you get a Prayer-book in your hand. 
And stand between two churchmen, ^^ good my lord ; 

8 statue was very often written and printed statua, as a trisyllable. 
1** Churchmen was formerly used of what are now palled clergymen. • 



SCENE VII. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 1 35 

For on that ground I'll make a holy descant : ^^ 

And be not easily won to our request ; 

Play the maid's part ; still answer nay, and take it. 

Glos. I go ; and if you plead as well for them 
As I can say nay to thee for myself, 
No doubt we'll bring it to a happy issue. 

Buck. Go, go, up to the leads ; ^^ the Lord Mayor knocks. — ■ 

{Exit Gloster. 

Enter the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Citizens. 

"Welcome, my lord : I dance attendance here ; 
I think the duke will not be spoke withal. — 

Enter, from the Castle^ Catesby. 

Now, Catesby, what says your lord to my request ? 

Cate. He doth entreat your Grace, my noble lord, 
To visit him to-morrow or next day : 
He is within, with two right-reverend fathers, 
Divinely bent to meditation ; 
And in no worldly suit would he be moved, 
To draw him from his holy exercise. 

Buck. Return, good Catesby, to the gracious duke ; 
Tell him, myself, the Mayor and Aldermen, 
In deep designs and matters of great moment, 
No less importing than our general good, 
Are come to have some conference with his Grace. 

Cate. I'll signify so much unto him straight. {Exit. 

11 Ground and descant were technical terms in music ; the former mean- 
ing the original air, the latter the variations. 

12 Formerly many buildings were roofed with lead. " Up to the leads " 
therefore means up to the roof, or close under the eaves; the topmost part 
of the biulding. 



136 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IIL 

Buck. Ah, ha, my lord, this prince is not an Edward ! 
He is not loUing on a lewd day-bed, 
But on his knees at meditation ; 
Not dallying with a brace of courtezans. 
But meditating with two deep divines ; 
Not sleeping, to engross ^^ his idle body, 
But praying, to enrich his watchful soul. 
Happy were England, would this virtuous prince 
Take on himself the sovereignty thereof; 
But sore I fear we shall not win him to it. 

May. Marry, God defend his Grace should say us nay ! 

Buck. I fear he will. Here Catesby comes again. — 

Re-enter Catesby. 

Now, Catesby, what says his Grace ? 

Cate. He wonders to what end you have assembled 
Such troops of citizens to come to him. 
His Grace not being warn'd thereof before : 
He fears, my lord, you mean no good to him. 

Buck. Sorry I am my noble cousin should 
Suspect me, that I mean no good to him : 
By Heaven, we come to him in perfect love ; 
And so once more return and tell his Grace. — 

\_Exit Catesby. 
When holy and devout religious men 

Are at their beads, 'tis much to draw them thence ; 
So sweet is zealous contemplation. 

Enter Gloster, in a gallery above, betiveen two Bishops. 
Catesby returns. 

May, See, where his Grace stands 'tween two clergymen ! 

13 That is, to pamper, fatten, or make gross. 



SCENE VII. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. I37 

Buck. Two props of virtue for a Christian prince^ 
To stay him from the fall of vanity : 
And, see, a book of prayer i^ in his hand, — 
True ornament to know a holy man. — 
Famous Plantagenet, most gracious prince, 
Lend favourable ear to our request ; 
And pardon us the interruption 
Of thy devotion and right Christian zeal. 

Glos. My lord, there needs no such apology : 
I rather do beseech you pardon me, 
Who, earnest in the service of my God, 
Neglect the visitation of my friends. 
But, leaving this, what is your Grace's pleasure ? 

Buck. Even that, I hope, which pleaseth God above, 
And all good men of this ungovern'd isle. 

Glos. I do suspect I have done some offence 
That seems disgracious in the city's eye ; 
And that you come to reprehend my ignorance. 

Buck. You have, my lord ; would it might please your 
Grace, 
On our entreaties, to amend your fault ! 

Glos. Else wherefore breathe I in a Christian land ? 

Buck. Know, then, it is your fault that you resign 
The supreme seat, the throne majestical, 
The scepter'd office of your ancestors, 
Your state of fortune and your due of birth^ 
The lineal glory of your royal House, 
To the corruption of a blemish'd stock : 
Whilst, in the mildness of your sleepy thoughts, — 

14 Prayer is used by Shakespeare as one or two syllables indifferently, 
to suit his verse. Here it is a dissyllable. The same of hour, fire, even, 
given, power, fiower, toward or towards, and sundry others. 



138 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IIL 

Which here we waken to our country's good, — 
This noble isle doth want her proper limbs ; 
Her face defaced with scars of infamy, 
Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants, 
And almost shoulder'd in ^^ the swallowing.gulf 
Of dark forgetfulness and deep oblivion. 
Which to recure,^^ we heartily solicit 
Your gracious self to take on you the charge 
And kingly government of this your land ; 
Not as protector, steward, substitute. 
Or lowly factor for another's gain ; 
But as successively, from blood to blood, 
Your right of birth, your empery, your own. 
For this, consorted with the citizens. 
Your very worshipful and loving friends. 
And by their vehement instigation, 
In this just suit come I to move your Grace. 
Glos. I cannot tell, if to depart in silence, 
Or bitterly to speak in your reproof. 
Best fitteth my degree or your condition : 
If not to answer, you might haply think 
Tongue-tied ambition, not replying, yielded 
To bear the golden yoke of sovereignty, 

15 In for into, the two being often used indiscriminately. — To shoulder^ 
as the word is here used, is to thrust or heave by force or violence. Stee- 
vens quotes a similar expression from Lyson's Environs of London : " Lyke 
tyraunts and lyke madde men helpynge to shulderynge other of the sayd 
bannermen ynto the dyche." — In the preceding Xxxi^, graft ior grafted, as 
before convict for convicted. See page 85, note 14. 

16 To recure is to recover. Spenser has the word repeatedly in the same 
sense. So The Faerie Queene, ii. 12, 19 : 

Whose mariners and merchants with much toyle 
Labour'd in vaine to have recur' d their prize- 



SCENE VII. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 139 

Which fondly you would here impose on me ; 

If to reprove you for this suit of yours, 

So season'd with your faithful love to me, 

Then, on the other side, I check'd my friends. 

Therefore, — to speak, and to avoid the first, • 

And then, in speaking, not t' incur the last, — 

Definitively thus I answer you. 

Your love deserves my thanks ; but my desert 

Unmeritable ^^ shuns your high request. 

First, if all obstacles were cut away. 

And that my path were even to the crown, 

As the ripe revenue and due of birth ; 

Yet so much is my poverty of spirit. 

So mighty and so many my defects. 

That I would rather hide me from my greatness — 

Being a bark to brook no mighty sea — 

Than in my greatness covet to be hid. 

And in the vapour of my glory smother'd. 

But, God be thank'd, there is no need of me ; 

And much I need, to help you, were there need ; ^^ 

The royal tree hath left us royal fruit. 

Which, mellow'd by the stealing hours of time, 

Will well become the seat of majesty. 

And make, no doubt, us happy by his reign. 

On him I lay what you would lay on me, 

The right and fortune of his happy stars ; 

Which God defend ^^ that I should wring from him ! 

17 Unmeritable for unmeriting. This indiscriminate use of active and 
passive forms occurs very often. 

18 " And I fall far short of the ability to help you, if help were needed," 

19 V God defend" is the same as God forbid. Repeatedly used thus by 
Shakespeare ; and a common usage of the time. 



140 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT III. 

Buck. My lord, this argues conscience in your Grace ; 
But the respects thereof are nice ^^ and trivial. 
All circumstances well considered. 
You say that Edward is your brother's son : 
So say we too,- but not by Edward's wife ; 
For first he was contract to Lady Lucy, — 
Your mother lives a witness to his vow, — 
And afterward by substitute betroth'd 
To Bona, sister to the Kang of France. 
These both put by, a poor petitioner, 
A care-crazed mother of a many children, 
A beauty-waning and distressed widow. 
Even in the afternoon of her best days,- 
Made prize and purchase of his wanton eye. 
Seduced the pitch and height of his degree 
To base declension and loathed bigamy. 
More bitterly could I expostulate. 
Save that, for reverence to some alive,^i 
I give a sparing limit to my tongue. 
Then, good my lord, take to your royal self 
This proffer' d benefit of dignity ; 
If not to bless us and the land withal. 
Yet to draw forth your noble ancestry 
From the corruption of abusing time 
Unto a lineal true-derived course. 

May. Do, good my lord ; your citizens entreat you. 

Buck. Refuse not, mighty lord, this proffer'd love. 

20 Respects for considerations ; a frequent sense of the word. — Nice here 
means unimportant, or, perhaps, over-scrupulous. 

21 Buckingham here hints at the pretended illegitimacy of Edward and 
Clarence. By "some alive " he means the Duchess of York, the mother of 
Edward and Richard. 



SCENE VIL KING RICHARD THE THIRD. I4I 

Cate. O, make them joyful, grant their lawful suit ! 

Glos. Alas, why would you heap those cares on me ? 
I am unfit for state and majesty. 
I do beseech you, take it not amiss ; 
I cannot nor I will not yield to you. 

Buck. If you refuse it, — as, in love and zeal, 
Loth to depose the child, your brother's son ; 
As well we know your tenderness of heart, 
And gentle, kind, effeminate remorse,^^ 
Which we have noted in you to your kindred, 
And equally indeed to all estates ; — 
Yet, whether you accept our suit or no. 
Your brother's son shall never reign our King ; 
But we will plant some other in the throne. 
To the disgrace and downfall of your House ; 
And in this resolution here we leave you. — 
Come, citizens : zounds ! I'll entreat no more. 

Glos. O, do not swear, my Lord of Buckingham. 

\Exit Buckingham : the Mayor, Aldermen, and 

Citizens retiring. 

Cate. Call them again, sweet prince, accept their suit : 
If you deny them, all the land will rue it. 

Glvs. Will you enforce me to a world of cares ? 
Call them again. 

[Catesby goes to the Mayor, 6^^., and then exit. 
— I am not made of stone. 
But penetrable to your kind entreats. 
Albeit against my conscience and my soul. — 

Re-enter Buckingham and Catesby ; the Mayor, &^c.j coming 

forward. 

22 Remorse, again, for pity or compassion. See page 59, note 16. 



142 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT III. 

Cousin of Buckingham, — and sage, grave men, — 

Since you will buckle fortune on my back, 

To bear her burden, wher I will or no, 

I must have patience to endure the load: 

But, if black scandal or foul-faced reproach 

Attend the sequel of your imposition. 

Your mere enforcement shall acquittance ^3 me 

From all the impure blots and stains thereof; 

For Ged he knows, and you may partly see, 

How far I am from the desire of this. 

May. God bless your Grace ! we see it, and will say it. 

Glos. In saying so, you shall but say the truth. 

Buck. Then I salute you with this royal title : 
Long live King Richard, England's worthy King ! 

Mayor, ^c. Amen. 

Buck. To-morrow may it please you to be crown'd ? 

Glos. Even when you please, since you will have it so. 

Buck. To-morrow, then, we will attend your Grace : 
And so, most joyfully, we take our leave. 

Glos. \To the Bishops.] Come, let us to our holy work 
again. — 
Farewell, good cousin ; — farewell, gentle friends. \_Exeunt 

28 Acquittance for acquit, because the verse wanted a trisyllable. 



SCENE I. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. I43 



ACT IV. 

Scene I. — London. Before the Tower. 

Enter, on one side, Queen Elizabeth, Duchess ^York, and 
Dorset ; on the other, Anne Duchess of Gloster,^ leading 
Lady Margaret Plantagenet, Clarence's young Daugh- 
ter. 
Duch. Who meets us here ? my niece ^ Plantagenet, 

Led in the hand of her kind aunt of Gloster ? 

Now, for my life, she's wandering to the Tower, 

On pure heart's love, to greet the tender Princes. — 

Daughter, well met. 

Anne. God give your Graces both 

A happy and a joyful time of day ! 

Q. Eliz. As much to you, good sister ! Whither away? 
Anne. No further than the Tower ; and, as I guess, 

Upon the like devotion as yourselves. 

To gratulate the gentle Princes there. 

Q. Eliz. Kind sister, thanks : we'll enter all together : 

And, in good time, here the lieutenant comes. — 

Enter Brakenbury. 
Master lieutenant, pray you, by your leave, 

1 We have not seen this lady since the second scene of the first Act, in 
which she promised to meet Richard at Crosby-place. She was marrried to 
him about the year 1472. 

2 The Duchess is speaking to what we should call her grand-daughter. 
But the words grand-son, grand-daughter, grand-children, are not used by 
Shakespeare at all ; their places being supplied by nephew and niece; some- 
times by cousin. 



144 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IV. 

How doth the Prince, and my young son of York ? 

Brak. Right well, dear madam. By your patience, 
I may not suffer you to visit them ; 
The King hath straitly charged the contrary. 

Q, Eliz. The King ! who's that? 

Brak, I mean the Lord Protector. 

Q. Eliz, The Lord protect him from that kingly title ! 
Hath he set bounds between their love and me ? 
I am their mother ; who shall bar me from them ? 

Duch. I am their father's mother ; I will see them. 

Anne, Their aunt I am in law, in love their mother : 
Then bring me to their sights ; I'll bear thy blame, 
And take thy office from thee, on my peril. 

Brak. No, madam, no ; I may not leave it so : ^ 
I'm bound by oath, and therefore pardon me. \_Exit. 

Enter Stanley. 

Stan. Let me but meet you, ladies, one hour hence, 
And I'll salute your Grace of York as mother. 
And reverend looker-on, of two fair queens. — 
\To Anne.] Come, madam, you must straight to Westminsterj 
There to be crowned Richard's royal Queen. 

Q. Eliz, Ah, cut my lace asunder, 
That my pent heart may have some scope to beat, 
Or else I swoon with this dead-killing news ! 

Anne, Despiteful tidings ! O unpleasing news ! 

Dor. Be of good cheer : — mother, how fares your Grace ? 

Q. Eliz, O Dorset, speak not to me, get thee hence ! 
Death and destruction dog thee at the heels ; 
Thy mother's name is ominous to children. 

3 He refers to his office or charge, which she has offered to take upon 
herself at her own risk or peril. 



SCENE I. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 145 

If thou wilt outstrip death, go cross the seas, 
And live with Richmond, from the reach of Hell : 
Go, hie thee, hie thee from this slaughter-house, 
Lest thou increase the number of the dead ; 
And make me die the thrall of Margaret's curse, 
Nor mother, wife, nor England's counted Queen. 

Sfan. Full of wise care is this your counsel, madam. — 
Take all the swift advantage of the hours ; 
You shall have letters from me to my son 
In your behalf, to meet you on the way : 
Be not ta'en tardy by unwise delay. 

Duck. O ill-dispersing wind of misery ! — 
O my accursed womb, the bed of death ! 
A cockatrice 4 hast thou hatch'd to the world. 
Whose unavoided eye is murderous. 

Stall. Come, madam, come ; I in all haste was sent. 

Anne. And I in all unwillingness will go. — 
O, would to God that the inclusive verge 
Of golden metal that must round my brow 
Were red-hot steel, to sear me to the brain \^ 

4 The cockatrice was so called from its fabled generation from the egg of 
a cock ; the term being derived from cock and after, Anglo-Saxon for adder. 
Cockatrice, it seems, was but another name for the basilisk. So in Browne's 
Vulgar Errors, Book iii. chap. 7 : " Many opinions are passant concerning 
the basilisk, or little king of serpents, commonly called the cockatrice." 
And again : " As for the generation of the basilisk, that it proceedeth from 
a cock's egg, hatched under a toad or serpent, it is a conceit as monstrous 
as the brood itself." See page 59, note 15. 

5 She seems to allude to the ancient mode of punishing a regicide, or 
other criminals, by placing a crown of iron heated red-hot upon his head. 
In some of the monkish accounts of a place of future torments, a burning 
crown is likewise appropriated to those who deprived any lawful monarch 
of his kingdom. The Earl of Athol, who was executed for the murder of 
James I., King of Scots, was previous to death crowned with a hot iron. 



146 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IV, 

Anointed let me be with deadly venom ; 

And die, ere men can say, God save the Queen ! 

Q. Eliz. Go, go, poor soul, I envy not thy glory ; 
To feed my humour, wish thyself no harm. 

Anne. No ! why ? When he that is my husband now 
Came to me, as I foUow'd Henry's corse ; 
When scarce the blood was well wash'd from his hands 
Which issued from my other angel husband, 
And that dead saint which then I weeping foUow'd ; 
O, when, I say, I look'd on Richard's face. 
This was my wish : Be thou, quoth I, accursed, 
For making me, so young, so old a widow / 
And, when thou wedd^st, let sorrow haunt thy bed ; 
And be thy wife — if any be so mad — 
More miserable by the life of thee 
Than thou hast made me by my dear tardus death I 
Lo, ere I can repeat this curse again. 
Even in so short a space, my woman's heart 
Grossly grew captive to his honey words. 
And proved the subject of mine own soul's curse. 
Which ever since hath kept mine eyes from rest ; 
For never yet one hour in his bed 
Have I enjoy 'd the golden dew of sleep, 
But have been waked by his timorous dreams.^ 
Besides, he hates me for my father Warwick ; 
And will, no doubt, shortly be rid of me. 



6 This is from the History : " He tooke ill rest a nights, laie long waking 
and musing, sore wearied with care and watch, rather slumbered than 
slept, troubled with fearfull dreames, suddenlie sometime start up, lept out 
of his bed, and ran about the chamber ; so was his restless heart continu- 
allie tossed and tumbled with the tedious impression and stormie remem- 
brance of his abhominable deed." 



SCENE I 



KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 14/ 



Q. EUz, Poor heart, adieu ! I pity thy complaining. 

Anne, No more than from my soul I mourn for yours. 

Q. EUz. Farewell, thou woeful welcomer of glory ! 

Anne. Adieu, poor soul, that takest thy leave of it ! 

Duch. \To Dorset.] Go thou to Richmond, and good 
fortune guide thee ! — 
\To Anne.] Go thou to Richard, and good angels tend 

thee ! — 
\To Elizabeth.] Go thou to sanctuary, and good thoughts 

possess thee ! — 
I to my grave, where peace and rest lie with me ! 
Eighty odd years ''' of sorrow have I seen. 
And each hour's joy wreck'd with a week of teen.^ 

Q. EUz. Stay yet, look back with me unto the Tower. — 
Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes. 
Whom envy hath immured within your walls ! 
Rough cradle for such little pretty ones ! 
Rude ragged nurse, old sullen playfellow 
For tender princes, use my babies well ! 
So foolish sorrow bids your stones farewell. \Exeunt. 

7 Shakespeare seems here to have spoken at random. The present scene 
is in 1483. Richard Duke of York, the husband of this lady, had he been 
then Uving, would have been but seventy-three years old, and we may rea- 
sonably suppose she was not older : nor did she go speedily to the grave \ 
she lived till 1495. 

8 Teen seems to have been rather a favourite word with the Poet fot 
grief ox sorrow. See The Tempest, page 51, note 15, 



£48 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IV. 



Scene II. — The Same. A Room of State in the Palace. 

Sennet. Enter Richard, crowned; Buckingham, Catesby, 
a Page, and others. 

K, Rich. Stand all apart. — Cousin of Buckingham, — 

Buck. My gracious sovereign ? 

K. Rich. Give me thy hand. \_Ascends the throne^ Thus 
high, by thy advice 
And thy assistance, is King Richard seated : 
But shall we wear these honours for a day ? 
Or shall they last, and we rejoice in them? 

Buck. Still live they, and for ever let them last ! 

K. Rich. Ah, Buckingham, now do I play the touch,i 
To try if thou be current gold indeed : 
V'oung Edward lives ; think now what I would speak. 
. Buck. Say on, my loving lord. 

K. Rich. Why, Buckingham, I say, I would be king. 

Buck. Why, so you are, my thrice-renowned liege. 

K. Rich. Ha ! am I king ? 'tis so : but Edward lives. 

Buck. True, noble prince. 

K. Rich, O bitter consequence. 

That Edward still should live ! Ti-ue, jioble prince / — 
Cousin, thou wert not wont to be so dull : 
Shall I be plain ? I wish the bastards dead ; 
And I would have it suddenly perform'd. 
What say'st thou now ? speak suddenly,^ be brief. 

Buck. Your Grace may do your pleasure. 

K. Rich. Tut, tut, thou art all ice, thy kindness freezes : 

1 To play the touch is to do the office of the touchstone, that is, a test, to 
prove the quahty of a thing. 

2 Suddenly is here the same as quickly. 



SCENE II. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. I49 

Say, have I thy consent that they shall die ? 

Buck. Give me some breath, some little pause, my lord, 
Before I positively speak herein : 
I will resolve^ your Grace immediately. \_Exit. 

Cate. \_Aside to another?;^ The King is angry; see, he 
gnaws his lip. 

K. Rich. I will converse with iron-witted fools 
And unrespective boys :^ [Descends from his throne. 

none are for me 
That look into me with considerate eyes : 
High-reaching Buckingham grows circumspect. — 
Boy !— 

Page. My lord ? 

K. Rich. Know'st thou not any whom corrupting gold 
Would tempt unto a close exploit of death ? 

Page. I know a discontented gentleman, 
Whose humble means match not his haughty mind : 
Gold were as good as twenty orators. 
And will, no doubt, tempt him to any thing. 

K. Rich. What is his name ? 

Page. His name, my lord, is Tyrrel. 

K. Rich. I partly know the man : go call him hither. — 

{Exit Page. 
The deep-revolving witty ^ Buckingham 

No more shall be the neighbour to my counsels : 

Hath he so long held out with me untired. 

And stops he now for breath ? well, be it so. — 

3 Resolve in the sense of inform or satisfy ; a frequent usage. 

4 Unrespective is inconsiderate or unthoughtful ; in accordance with the 
old use of respect. See page 140, note 20. 

5 Witty was employed to signify a man of sagacity, wisdom, ox judgment; 
or, as B3.ret defines it, " having the senses sharp, perceiving or foreseeing 
quicklie" 



150 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IV. 

Enter Stanley. 

How now ! what news with you ? 

Stan. My lord, I hear the Marquess Dorset's fled 
To Richmond, in those parts beyond the seas 
Where he abides. 

K. Rich. Come hither, Catesby : rumour it abroad 
That Anne, my wife, is very grievous sick ; 
I will take order for her keeping close. 
Inquire me out some mean-born gentleman, 
Whom I will marry straight to Clarence' daughter j 
The boy is foolish,^ and I fear not him. 
Look, how thou dream'st ! I say again, give out 
That Anne my Queen is sick, and Hke to die : 
About it ; for it stands me much upon,"^ 
To stop all hopes whose growth may damage me. — 

\Exit Catesby. 
I must be married to my brother's daughter. 

Or else my kingdom stands on brittle glass : 
Murder her brothers, and then marry her ! 
Uncertain way of gain ! But I am in 
So far in blood, that sin will pluck on sin : 
Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye. — 

Re-enter the Page, with Tyrrel. 

6 This youth, who is known in history as Edward Earl of Warwick, was 
at that time but about ten years old. He was put to death by Henry VII. in 
1499 ; he being then the only surviving male of the Plantagenet name. The 
chroniclers represent him as little better than an idiot ; but his stupidity was 
most likely the result of cruel treatment; he being confined immediately 
after the battle of Bosworth, and his education totally neglected. It was the 
interest of the reigning powers to make him " foolish," or at least to have 
him thought so. 

7 This is an old idiomatic phrase for it behoves me, or, as we should now 
say, it stands me in hand. See King Richard II,, page 94, note 14. 



SCENE II. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. I5I 

Is thy name Tyrrel? 

Tyr. James Tyrrel, and your most obedient subject. 

K. Rich. Art thou indeed ? 

Tyr. Prove me, my gracious sovereign. 

K. Rich. Barest thou resolve to kill a friend of mine ? 

Tyr. Ay, my lord ; 
But I had rather kill two enemies. 

K. Rich. Why, then thou hast it : two deep enemies, 
Foes to my rest and my sweet sleep's disturbers. 
Are they that I would have thee deal upon : 
Tyrrel, I mean those bastards in the Tower. 

Tyr. Let me have open means to come to them. 
And soon I'll rid you from the fear of them. 

K. Rich. Thou sing'st sweet music. Hark, come hither, 
Tyrrel : 
Go, by this token : rise, and lend thine ear : [ Whispers. 

There is no more but so : say it is done. 
And I will love thee, and prefer thee for it. 

Tyr. I will dispatch it straight. ' \_Exit. 

Re-enter Buckingham. 

Buck. My lord, I have consider' d in my mind 
The late demand that you did sound me in. 

K. Rich. Well, let that rest. Dorset is fled to Richmond 

Buck. I hear the news, my lord. 

K. Rich. Stanley, he is your wife's son : well, look to it. 

B7uk. My lord, I claim the gift, my due by promise, 
For which your honour and your faith is pawn'd ; 
Th' earldom of Hereford, and the movables. 
The which you promised I should possess. 

K. Rich. Stanley, look to your wife : if she convey 
Letters to Richmond, you shall answer it. 



152 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IV. 

Buck. What says your Highness to my just request? 

K. Rich. I do remember me, Henry the Sixth 
Did prophesy that Richmond should be king, 
When Richmond was a little peevish boy. 
A king ! — perhaps — 

Buck. My lord, — 

K. Rich. How chance the prophet could not at that time 
Have told me, I being by, that I should kill him ? 

Buck. My lord, your promise for the earldom, — 

K. Rich. Richmond ! When last I was at Exeter, 
The mayor in courtesy show'd me the castle. 
And call'd it Rouge-mont : at which name I started, 
Because a bard of Ireland told me once, 
I should not live long after I saw Richmond. 

Buck. My lord, — 

K. Rich. Ay, what's o'clock ? 

Buck. I am thus bold to put your Grace in mind 
Of what you promised me. 

K. Rich. Well, but what's o'clock? 

Buck. Upon the stroke of ten. 

K. Rich. Well, let it strike. 

Buck. Why let it strike ? 

K. Rich. Because that, like a Jack,^ thou keep'st the stroke 
Betwixt thy begging and my meditation. 
I am not in the giving vein to-day. 

8 This alludes to the Jack of the clock, which was a figure made in old 
clocks to strike the bell on the outside. Richard compares Buckingham to 
one of the automatons, and bids him not to suspend the stroke on the 
clock bell, but strike, that the noise may be past, and himself at liberty to 
pursue his meditations. The following passage from Cotgrave will further 
elucidate its meaning : " A jacke of the clocke-house ; a little busie-body, 
vt\ed\ex, Jack-stickler ; one that has an oare in every man's boat, or his hand 
in every man's dish." 



SCENE III. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 1 53 

Buck. Why, then resolve me whether you will or no. 

K. Rich. Thou troublest me ; I am not in the vein. 

\_Exeunt all but Buckingham. 

Buck. Is it even so ? rewards he my true service 
With such contempt ? made I him king for this ? 
O, let me think on Hastings, and be gone 
To Brecknock,^ while my fearful head is on ! \_Exit 



Scene III. — Another Room in the Palace. 

Enter Tyrrel. 

Tyr. The tyrannous and bloody act is done, 
The most arch deed of piteous massacre 
That ever yet this land was guilty of. 
Dighton and Forrest, whom I did suborn 
To do this ruthless piece of butchery. 
Albeit they were flesh'd i villains, bloody dogs. 
Melting with tenderness and mild compassion. 
Wept like two children in their death's sad story. 
O, thus, quoth Dighton, lay the gentle babes , — 
Thus, thus, quoth Forrest, girdling one another 
Within their innocent alabaster arms : 
Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, 
Which in their summer beauty kissed each other, 
A book of prayers on their pillow lay ; 

9 Brecknock was the name of Buckingham's castle in Wales. 

1 The verb to fiesh is defined by Richardson " to train, to inure, to in- 
dulge, to glut or satiate." So in Henry V., iii. i : " And the fiesKd soldier, 
rough and hard of heart," &c. Also in Drayton's Miseries of Queen 

Margaret : 

Both which vfe-xeflesht abundantly with blood 

In those three battles they had won before. 



154 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IV. 

Which once, quoth Forrest, almost changed my mind ; 
But, O, the Devil — there the villain stopp'd ; 
When Dighton thus told on : We smothered 
The most 7'eplenished sweet work of Nature, 
That from the prime creation e'er she framed. 
Hence both are gone with conscience and remorse,^ 
They could not speak ; and so I left them both, 
To bear this tidings to the bloody King : 
And here he comes. — 

Enter King Richard. 

All health, my sovereign lord ! 

K. Rich. Kind Tyrrel, am I happy in thy news ? 

Tyr. If to have done the thing you gave in charge 
Beget your happiness, be happy then. 
For it is done. 

K. Rich. But didst thou see them dead? 

Tyr. I did, my lord. 

K. Rich. And buried, gentle Tyrrel? 

Tyr. The chaplain of the Tower hath buried them ; 
But where, to say the truth, I do not know. 

K. Rich. Come to me, Tyrrel, soon at ^ after supper. 
When thou shalt tell the process of their death. 
Meantime, but think how I may do thee good. 
And be inheritor of thy desire. 
Farewell till then. 

Tyr. I humbly take my leave. \_Exit. 

K. Rich. The son of Clarence have I pent up close ; 

2 " Conscience and remorse " probably means what we call remorse of 
conscience, or, simply, remorse. 

3 Shakespeare has the phrase sooti at several times in the sense of about. 
See The Merchant, page 114, note i.' 



SCENE III. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 15$ 

His daughter meanly have I match'd in marriage ; ^ 
The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham's bosom, 
And Anne my wife hath bid the world good night. 
Now, for I know the Bretagne ^ Richmond aims 
At young Elizabeth, my brother's daughter. 
And, by that knot, looks proudly on the crown, 
To her go I, a jolly thriving wooer. 

Enter Catesby. 

Gate. My lord, — 

K. Rich. Good news or bad, that thou comest in so 
bluntly? 

Gate. Bad news, my lord : Ely is fled to Richmond ; 
And Buckingham, back'd with the hardy Welshmen, 
Is in the field, and still his power increaseth. 

K. Rich. Ely with Richmond troubles me more near 
Than Buckingham and his rash-levied strength. 
Come, I have learn'd that fearful commenting 
Is leaden servitor to dull delay \ ^ 
Delay leads impotent and snail-paced beggary : 
Then fiery expedition be my wing, 

4 The daughter of Clarence was in fact married to Sir Richard Pole, and 
hence became the mother of Cardinal Pole. Sir Richard was half-brother 
to the Countess of Richmond. 

5 He thus denominates Richmond, because after the battle of Tewksbury 
he had taken refuge in the Court of Francis II,, Duke of Bretagne, where 
by the procurement of Edward IV. he was kept a long time in honourable 
custody. 

6 Fearful commenting is timorous or cowardly reflection or deliberation ; 
leaden of course is heavy or sluggish ; servitor is an old form for servant ; 
used whenever a trisyllable is wanted with that meaning ; and delay is put 
iox procrastination or reluctance to act. So that the sense is, cowardly de- 
liberation is the tardy, lingering slave of a procrastinating spirit or master. 
The meaning of the next line is, that procrastination leads on to or super' 
induces feeble and creeping or slow-footed beggary. 



156 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IV. 

Jove's Mercury, and herald for a king ! "'' 

Go, muster men : my counsel is my shield j ^ 

We must be brief, when traitors brave the field.^ \_Exeunt. 



Scene IV. — The Same. Before the Palace, 

Enter Queen Margaret. 

Q. Mar. So, now prosperity begins to mellow, 
And drop into the rotten mouth of death. 
Here in these confines slily have I lurk'd, 
To watch the waning of mine enemies. 
A dire induction ^ am I witness to, 
And will to France ; hoping the consequence 
Will prove as bitter, black, and tragical. 
Withdraw thee, wretched Margaret : who comes here ? 

\Retires. 

Enter Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess ^York. 

Q. Eliz. Ah, my poor Princes ! ah, my tender babes ! 
My unblown flowers, new-appearing sweets ! 
If yet your gentle souls fly in the air, 
And be not fix'd in doom perpetual, 
Hover about me with your airy wings, 

7 " Let my action be winged with the speed of lightning." Mercury was 
the old god of dispatch, and so was Jupiter's expressman. The text is made 
somewhat obscure by the omission of the relative ; the sense being " expe- 
dition who is Jove's Mercury, and so is a king's proper herald." 

8 " My shield is my counsel, and shall deliberate the matter for me." He 
means that he is going to discuss or debate the issue not with words, but 
with knocks. 

9 To " brave the field " is, probably, to challenge, dare, or defy one to the 
field or to battle. — Brief, again, for quick or speedy. 

1 Induction here \s, prologue ox preparation. See page 47, note 7. 



SCENE IV. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 1 57 

And hear your mother's lamentation ! 

Q. Mar. \_Aside.'] Hover about her ; say, that right for 
right 
Hath dimm'd your infant morn to aged night.^ 

Duch. So many miseries have crazed my voice, 
That my woe-wearied tongue is still and mute. — 
Edward Plantagenet, why art thou dead ? 

Q. Mar. [^Aside.'] Plantagenet doth quit=^ Plantagenet, 
Edward for Edward pays a dying debt. 

Q. Eliz. Wilt Thou, O God, fly from such gentle lambs, 
And throw them in the entrails of the wolf? 
When didst Thou sleep while such a deed was done ? 

Q. Mar. \_Aside^ When holy Harry died, and my sweet 
son. 

Duch. Dead life, blind sight, poor mortal living ghost. 
Woe's scene, world's shame, grave's due by life usurp'd. 
Brief abstract and record of tedious days. 
Rest thy unrest on England's lawful earth,"* {Sitting down. 
Unlawfully made drunk with innocent blood ! 

Q. Eliz, Ah, that thou wouldst as soon afford a grave 
As thou canst yield a melancholy seat ! 

2 Meaning, apparently, that the Divine Justice, which was alleged in i. 3, 
as having righted others against her, and avenged the death of Rutland by 
that of her son Edward, is now turning upon her side, and righting her 
against others. 

3 To quit was often used for to acquit, and also for to requite. Here it 
may have either sense ; perhaps it has both senses. Margaret may regard 
the death of her Edward as having been avenged by that of the other 
Edward ; or she may think of the latter as offsetting, or atoning for, the 
former : so that the requital may itself serve for an acquittal. — To " pay a 
dying debt " is, I suppose, to pay a debt by dying. 

4 It is not very apparent why, or in what sense, lawful is here used : 
perhaps merely for a verbal antithesis to unlawful. Or is the speaker re' 
garding England as the proper seat of order and law? 



158 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IV. 

Then would I hide my bones, not rest them here. 
Ah, who hath any cause to mourn but I ? 

\_Sitting down by her. 

Q. Mar. [ Coming forward.~\ If ancient sorrow be most 
reverend, 
Give mine the benefit of seniory,^ 
And let my griefs frown on the upper hand. 
If sorrow can admit society, [^Sitting down with them. 

Tell o'er your woes again by viewing mine : 
I had an Edward, till a Richard kill'd him ; 
I had a Harry, till a Richard kill'd him : 
Thou hadst an Edward, till a Richard kill'd him ; 
Thou hadst a Richard, till a Richard kill'd him. 

Duch. I had a Richard too, and thou didst kill him ; 
I had a Rutland too, thou holp'st to kill him. 

Q. Mar. Thou hadst a Clarence too, and Richard kill'd 
him. 
From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept 
A hell-hound that doth hunt us all to death : 
That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes,^ 
To worry lambs, and lap their gentle blood ; 
That foul defacer of God's handiwork ; 
That excellent-grand tyrant of the Earth, 

5 Seniory is but a shortened form of seniority. — Ancient here has the 
sense of aged or veteran. Margaret's sorrow is older than that of the others. 
— To " frown on the upper hand " is to have precedence in the right of 
expression. 

6 Alluding to the tradition that Richard, at his birth, had his mouth 
armed with teeth. So, in v. 6, of the preceding play, Richard says in refer- 
ence to his birth. 

The midwife wonder'd, and the women cried, 
O, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth ! 
And so I was ; which plainly signified 
That I should snarl, and bite, and plaj"- the dog. 



SCENE IV. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 159 

That reigns in galled eyes''' of weeping souls ; 

Thy womb let loose, to chase us to our graves. — - 

O upright, just, and true-disposing God, 

How do I thank Thee, that this carnal^ cur 

Preys on the issue of his mother's body. 

And makes her pew-fellow^ with others' moan ! 

Duch. O Harry's wife, triiimph not in my woes ! 
God witness with me, I have wept for thine. 

Q. Mar. Bear with me j I am hungry for revenge, 
And now I cloy me with beholding it. 
Thy Edward he is dead, that kill'd my Edward ; 
Thy other Edward dead, to quit my Edward ; 
Young York he is but boot,!*^ because both they 
Match not the high perfection of my loss : 
Thy Clarence he is dead that stabb'd my Edward ; 
And the beholders of this tragic play, 
Th' adulterate ^1 Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Grey, 
Untimely smother'd in their dusky graves. 
Richard yet lives. Hell's black intelligencer ; 
Only reserved their ^^ factor, to buy souls, 
And send them thither : but at hand, at hand, 

' Eyes inflamed with weeping, or made red with " eye-offending brine." 
So in Hamlet, i. 2 : " The salt of most unrighteous tears had left the flush- 
ing in her galled eyes." 

8 Carnal for sanguinary or blood-thirsty ; as in Hamlet, v. 2 : " So shall 
you hear of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts." 

9 Pew-fellow is companion or participator. The Poet has coach-fellow in 
the same sense, apparently. 

10 Boot is an old word for any thing thrown into a bargain. 

11 Adulterate is stained with adultery. Alluding to Jane Shore. 

12 Their refers to Hell, which is used as a collective noun. — Intelligencer 
sometimes has the sense of intelligencing or giving intelligence. Here it 
seems, to mean spokesman, mouth-piece, or organ of communication. — Of 
course factor is agent. 



l60 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IV, 

Ensues his piteous and unpitied end : 
Earth gapes, Hell burns, fiends roar, saints pray. 
To have him suddenly convey'd from hence. — 
Cancel his bond of life/^ (^^^^ God, I pray, 
That I may live to say, T/ie dog is dead ! 

Q. Eliz. O, thou didst prophesy the time would come 
That I should wish for thee to help me curse 
That bottled spider, that foul bunch-back'd toad ! 

Q. Mar. I call'd thee then vain flourish of my fortune ; 
I call'd thee then poor shadow, painted queen ; 
The presentation of but what I was ; 
The flattering index of a direful pageant ; ^^ 
One heaved a- high, to be hurl'd down below ; 
A mother only mock'd with two sweet babes ; 
A dream of what thou wert j a breath, a bubble ; 
A sign of dignity, a garish flag 
To be the aim of every dangerous shot ; ^^ 
A queen in jest, only to fill the scene. 
Where is thy husband now? where be thy brothers? 
Where be thy two sons? wherein dost thou joy? 
Who sues to thee, and cries, God save the Queen ? 
Where be the bending peers that flatter'd thee ? 
Where be the thronging troops that follow'd thee ? 
Decline all this ^^ and see what now thou art : 
For happy wife, a most distressed widow ; 

13 The image is of a deed or indenture securing a life-tenure of property. 
So in Macbeth, iii. 2 : " Cancel and tear to pieces that great ^o/2fi? which keeps 
me paled." 

14 The index of a pageant was probably a painted cloth hung up before 
a booth where a pageant was to be exhibited. See page loi, note 17. 

15 Alluding to the dangerous situation of those persons to whose care the 
standards of armies were intrusted. 

16 That is, run it through all the moods and tenses. 



SCENE IV. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. l6l 

For joyful mother, one that wails the name ; 

For queen, a very caitiff crown'd with care ; 

For one being sued-to, one that humbly sues ; 

For one commanding all, obey'd of none ; 

For one that scorn'd at me, now scorn'd of me : 

Thus hath the course of justice wheel'd about. 

And left thee but a very prey to time ; 

Having no more but thought of what thou wert, 

To torture thee the more, being what thou art. 

Thou didst usurp my place, and dost thou not 

Usurp the just proportion of my sorrow ? 

Now thy proud neck bears half my burden'd yoke ; 

From which even here I slip my wearied head, 

And leave the burden of it all on thee. 

Farewell, York's wife ; and queen of sad mischance : 

These English woes will make me smile in France. 

Q. Eliz. O thou well-skill'd in curses, stay awhile, 
And teach me how to curse mine enemies ! 

Q. Mar. Forbear to sleep the night, and fast the day ; 
Compare dead happiness with living woe ; 
Think that thy babes were fairer than they were. 
And he that slew them fouler than he is : 
Bettering 1"^ thy loss makes the bad-causer worse : 
Revolving this will teach thee how to curse. 

Q. Eliz. My words are dull; O, quicken them with 
thine ! 

Q. Mar. Thy woes will make them sharp, and pierce like 
mine. {^Exit 

Duck. Why should calamity be full of words ? 

17 Bettering is here used in the sense of exaggerating or magnifying 
" The greater you conceive your loss to be, the worse the author of it will 
seem." 



1 62 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IV. 

Q. Eliz. Windy attorneys ^^ to their client woes, 
Airy succeeders of intestate joys,^^ 
Poor breathing orators of miseries ! 
Let them have scope : though what they do impart 
Help nothing else, yet do they ease the heart.^^ 

Duch. If so, then be not tongue-tied : go with me, 

And in the breath of bitter words let's smother 

My damned son, that thy two sweet sons smother'd. 

\_Drum within. 
I hear his drum : be copious in exclaims. 

Enter King Richard and his Train, marching. 

K. Rich. Who intercepts me in my expedition? 

Duch. O, she that might have intercepted thee. 
By strangling thee in her accursed womb. 
From all the slaughters, wretch, that thou hast done ! 

Q. Eliz. Hidest thou that forehead with a golden crown. 
Where should be branded, if that right were right, 
The slaughter of the Prince that owed that crown. 
And the dire death of my poor sons and brothers ? 
Tell me, thou villain-slave, where are my children ? 

Duch. Thou toad, thou toad, where is thy brother Clar- 
ence? 

18 Words are called " windy attorneys," because they are made up of 
wind. In his Venus and Adonis the Poet figures the tongue as the heart's 

attorney : 

But when the heart's attortiey once is mute, 
The client breaks, as desperate of his suit. 

19 The joys, being all consumed and passed away, have died intestate ; 
that is, have made no will, having nothing to bequeath ; and mere verbal 
complaints are their successors, but inherit nothing but misery. 

2<> This seems to have been rather a favourite idea with the Poet. So in 

Macbeth, iv. 3 : 

Give sorrow words ; the grief that does not speak 
Whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break. 



SCENE IV. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 1 63 

And little Ned Plantagenet, his son? 

Q. Eliz. Where is the gentle Rivers, Vaughan, Grey? 

Duch. Where is kind Hastings? 

K. Rich. A flourish, trumpets ! strike alarum, drums ! 
Let not the Heavens hear these tell-tale women 
Rail on the Lord's anointed : strike, I say ! — 

\_Flourish. Alarum. 
Either be patient, and entreat me fair, 
Or with the clamorous report of war 
Thus will I drown your exclamations. 

Duch. Art thou my son? 

K. Rich. Ay, I thank God, my father, and yourself. 

Duch. Then patiently hear my impatience. 

K. Rich. Madam, I have a touch of your condition,^! 
That cannot brook the accent of reproof. 

Duch. O, let me speak ! 

K. Rich. Do, then ; but I'll not hear. 

Duch. I will be mild and gentle in my words. 

K. Rich. And brief, good mother ; for I am in haste. 

Duch. Art thou so hasty? I have stay'd for thee, 
God knows, in torment and in agony. 

K. Rich. And came I not at last to comfort you ? 

Duch. No, by the holy Rood, thou know'st it well, 
Thou camest on Earth to make the Earth my hell. 
A grievous burden was thy birth to me ; 
Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy \ 
Thy school-days frightful, desperate, wild, and furious ; 
Thy prime of manhood daring, bold, and venturous ; 
Thy age confirm'd, proud, subtle, bloody, treacherous, 
More mild, but yet more harmful-kind in hatred : 

21 A smack or spice of your disposition or temper. For this use of condi- 
tion see As You Like It, page 46, note 25. 



164 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IV. 

What comfortable hour canst thou name, 
That ever graced me in thy company ? 

K. Rich. Faith, none, but Humphrey Hower,^^ that call'd 
your Grace 
To breakfast once forth of my company. 
If I be so disgracious in your eye, 
Let me march on, and not offend you, madam. — 
Strike up the drum. 

Duck. I pr'ythee, hear me speak. 

K. Rich. You speak too bitterly. 

Ditch. Hear me a word ; 

For I shall never speak to thee again. 

K. Rich. So. 

Duch. Either thou'lt die, by God's just ordinance, 
Ere from this war thou turn a conqueror ; 
Or I with grief and extreme age shall perish, 
And never look upon thy face again. 



22 So printed in the old copies. No satisfactory explanation of the pas- 
sage has yet been discovered. A part of St, Paul's Cathedral was called 
Duke Humphrey's Walk, because Humphrey, sometime Duke of Glouces- 
ter, was supposed to be buried there. As the old Cathedral was a place of 
great resort, those who were hard up for a dinner used to saunter there, 
perhaps in the hope of being asked to dinner by some of their acquaintance. 
Hence grew the phrase of " dining with Duke Humphrey," used of those 
who thus " waited upon Providence " for a chance to eat. And Steevens 
thinks that " Shakespeare might by this strange phrase, Humphrey Hozir, 
have designed to mark the hour at which the good Duchess was as hungry 
as the followers of Duke Humphrey." Singer thinks " it is possible that by 
Humphrey Hower Richard alludes to the hour of his birth, the hour after 
which his mother ate out of his company." And he quotes the old vulgar 
saying, that a teeming woman feeds two. According to this, Humphrey 
Hower might be meant as the name of the physician who attended the 
Duchess when her Richard was born. Staunton " apprehends that Humph- 
rey Hour was nothing more than a cant phrase for eating-hour^ None of 
these explanations can hold my assent, nor can I think of any better. 



SCENE IV. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 1 65 

Therefore take with thee my most heavy curse ; 

Which, in the day of battle, tire thee more 

Than all the c6mplete armour that thou wear'st ! 

My prayers on the adverse party fight ; 

And there the Uttle souls of Edward's children 

Whisper the spirits of thine enemies, 

And promise them success and victory. 

Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end ; 

Shame serves thy hfe, and doth thy death attend. \_Exif. 

Q. Eliz. Though far more cause, yet much less spirit to 
curse 
Abides in me ; I say amen to her. [ Going. 

Cy^' Rich. Stay, madam; I must speak a word with 
you. 

Q. Eliz. I have no more sons of the royal blood 
For thee to murder : for my daughters, Richard, 
They shall be praying nuns, not weeping queens \ 
And therefore level not to hit their lives. 

K. Rich. You have a daughter call'd Ehzabeth, 
Virtuous and fair, royal and gracious. 

Q. Eliz. And must she die for this ? O, let her live, 
And I'll corrupt her manners, stain her beauty : 
Slander myself as false to Edward's bed ; 
Throw over her the vale of infamy : 
So she may live unscarr'd of bleeding slaughter, 
I will confess she was not Edward's daughter. 

K. Rich. Wrong not her birth, she is of royal blood, 

Q. Eliz. To save her life, I'll say she is not so. 

K. Rich. Her life is safest only in her birth. 

O. Eliz. And only in that safety died her brothers. 

K. Rich. Lo, at their births good stars were opposite. 

Q, Eliz. No, to their lives bad friends were contrary. 



1 66 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IV„ 

K. Rich. All unavoided ^^ is the doom of destiny. 

Q. Eliz. True, when avoided grace makes destiny : 
My babes were destined to a fairer death, 
If grace had bless'd thee with a fairer life. 

K. Rich. You speak as if that I had slain my cousins. - 

Q. Eliz. Cousins, indeed ; and by their uncle cozen'd 
Of comfort, kingdom, kindred, freedom, life. 
Whose hand soever lanced their tender hearts. 
Thy head, all indirectly,^^ gave direction : 
No doubt the murderous knife was dull and blunt 
Till it was whetted on thy stone-hard heart, 
To revel in the entrails of my lambs. 
But that still 25 use of grief makes wild grief tame. 
My tongue should to thy ears not name my boys 
Till that my nails were anchor'd in thine eyes ; 
And I, in such a desperate bay of death, 
Like a poor bark, of sails and tackling reft. 
Rush all to pieces on thy rocky bosom. 

K. Rich. Madam, so thrive I in my enterprise 
And dangerous success of bloody wars,^^ 
As I intend more good to you and yours 
Than ever you and yours by me were harm'd ! 

Q. Eli^. What good is cover'd with the face of heaven, 



23 Unavoided for unavoidable. So the endings -ed and -able were often 
used indiscriminately. See Richard II., page 79, note 35. 

S'* Indirectly here means wrongfully or wickedly ; probably used for a 
sort of jingle with direction. It may be worth noting, however, that the 
radical sense of right, as also oi direct, is straight; while that of wrong, as 
also of indirect, is crooked. 

25 The use of still for continually is very frequent : here it is used as an 
adjective with the same sense, continual. 

26 That is, the bloody wars that are to follow; success being used in the 
Latin sense of succession or sequel. See Much Ado. cage 98, note 14. 



SCENE IV. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 16/ 

To be discover'd, that can do me good? 

K. Rich. Th' advancement of your children, gentle lady. 

Q. Eliz. Up to some scaffold, there to lose their heads ? 

K. Rich. No, to the dignity and height of honour, 
The high imperial type of this Earth's glory.^^ 

Q. Eliz. Flatter my sorrows with report of it ; 
Tell me what state, what dignity, what honour. 
Canst thou demise 28 to any child of mine ? 

K. Rich. Even all I have ; ay, and myself and all. 
Will I withal endow a child of thine ; 
So in the Lethe of thy angry soul 
Thou drown the sad remembrance of those wrongs 
Which thou supposest I have done to thee. 

Q. Eliz. Be brief, lest that the process of thy kindness 
Last longer telling than thy kindness' date. 

K. Rich. Then know, that from my soul I love thy daughter. 

Q. Eliz. My daughter's mother thinks it with her soul. 

K.Rich. What do you think ? 

Q. Eliz. That thou dost love my daughter from thy soul : 
So, from thy soul's love, didst thou love her brothers ; 
And, from my heart's love,^^ I do thank thee for it. 

K. Rich. Be not so hasty to confound my meaning : 
I mean, that with my soul I love thy daughter, 
A.nd do intend to make her Queen of England. 

Q. Eliz. Well, then, who dost thou mean shall be her king ? 

K. Rich. Even he that makes her queen : who else should 
be? 

27 That is, the crown, the emblem of 'royalty. 

28 To demise is to grant, from deniittere, Latin. 

29 The Queen is quibbling between the different senses oi from; one of 
which is out of, as when we say, " Speak the truth from the heart " ; the 
other, that of separation or distance, as when Hamlet says " any thing so 
overdone is from the purpose of playing." 



1 68 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IV. 

Q. Eliz. What, thou? 

K. Rich. Even I : what think you of it, madam? 

Q. Eliz. How canst thou woo her? 

K. Rich. That would I learn of you, 

As one being best acquainted with her humour. 

Q. Eliz. And wilt thou learn of me ? 

K. Rich. Madam, with all my heart. 

Q. Eliz. Send to her, by the man that slew her brothers, 
A pair of bleeding hearts ; thereon engraved. 
Edward and York ; then haply will she weep : 
Therefore present to her — as sometime Margaret 
Did to thy father, steep'd in Rutland's blood — 
A handkerchief; which, say to her, did drain 
The purple sap from her sweet brothers' bodies, 
And bid her dry her weeping eyes withal. 
If this inducement move her not to love, 
Send her a letter of thy noble deeds j 
Tell her thou madest away her uncle Clarence, 
Her uncle Rivers ; ay, and, for her sake, 
Madest quick conveyance with her good aunt Anne. 

K. Rich. You mock me, madam ; this is not the way 
To win your daughter. 

Q. Eliz. There's no other way ; 

Unless thou couldst put on some other shape. 
And not be Richard that hath done all this. 

K. Rich. Say that I did all this for love of her? 

Q. Eliz. Nay, then indeed she cannot choose but love thee, 
Having bought love with such a bloody spoil. 

K. Rich. Look, what is done cannot be now amended : 
Men shall 30 deal unadvisedly sometimes, 

30 Shall for will; the two being often used indiscriminate!)'. — Unad- 
visedly in the old sense of inconsiderately, rashly, or imprudently. See 
page 'j'j, note 25. 



SCENE IV. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 1 69 

Which after-hours give leisure to repent. 

If I did take the kingdom from your sons, 

To make amends, I'll give it to your daughter. 

A grandam's name is little less in love '' 

Than is the doting title of a mother ; 

They are as children but one step below, 

Even of your mettle, of your very blood ; 

Of all one pain, — save for a night of groans 

Endured of hor, for whom you bid^^ like sorrow. 

Your children were vexation to your youth ; 

But mine shall be a comfort to your age. 

The loss you have is but a son being king, 

And by that loss your daughter is made queen. 

I cannot make you what amends I would, 

Therefore accept such kindness as 1 can. 

Dorset your son, that with a fearful soul 

Leads discontented steps in foreign soil, 

This fair alliance quickly shall call home 

To high promotions and great dignity : 

The King, that calls your beauteous daughter wife, 

FamiHarly shall call thy Dorset brother ; 

Again shall you be mother to a king, 

And all the ruins of distressful times 

Repair'd with double riches of content. 

What ! we have many goodly days to see : 

The liquid drops of tears that you have shed 

Shall come again, transform 'd to orient pearl, 

Advantaging their loan with interest 

Of ten-times-double gain of happiness. 

31 " Endured 0/ her " is the same as endured dy her ; 0/ being formerly 
used in ^uch cases to denote the relation of agent. — Bid is an old preterite 
form for bided, suffered, or endured. 



I^'O KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IV. 

Go, then, my mother, to thy daughter go ; 
Make bold her bashful years with your experience ; 
Prepare her ears to hear a wooer's tale ; 
Put in her tender heart th' aspiring flame 
Of golden sovereignty ; acquaint the Princess 
With the sweet silent hours of marriage joys : 
And, when this arm of mine hath chastised 
The petty rebel, dull-brain'd Buckingham, 
Bound with triumphant garlands will I come, 
And lead thy daughter to a conqueror's bed ; 
To whom I will retail ^^ my conquest won. 
And she shall be sole victress, Caesar's Caesar. 

Q. Eliz. What were I best to say ? her father's brother 
Would be her lord? or shall I say, her uncle? 
Or, he that slew her brothers and her uncles? 
Under what title shall I woo for thee. 
That God, the law, my honour, and her love. 
Can make seem pleasing to her tender years ? 

K. Rich. Infer fair England's peace by this alHance. 

Q. Eliz. Which she shall purchase with still-lasting war. 

K. Rich. Tell her, the King, that may command, entreats. 

Q. Eliz. That at her hands which the King's King forbids- 

K. Rich. Say, she shall be a high and mighty queen„ 

Q. Eliz. To wail the title, as her mother doth. 

K. Rich. Say, I will love her everlastingly. 

Q. Eliz. But how long shall that title ^^ ever last ? 

K. Rich. Sweetly in force unto her fair life's end. 

Q. Eliz. But how long fairly shall her sweet life last ? 

K. Rich. As long as Heaven and Nature lengthen it. 

S2 Retail, again, for recount or tell over. See page no, note 6. 
33 The word title is here used in a legal or forensic sense, for interest in 
an estate. So says Heath. 



SCENE IV. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. I7I 

Q. Eliz. As long as Hell and Richard like of it. 

K. Rich. Say, I, her sovereign, am her subject now. 

Q. Eliz, But she, your subject, loathes such sovereignty. 

K. Rich. Be eloquent in my behalf to her. 

Q. Eliz. An honest tale speeds best being plainly told.""""""'* 

K. Rich. Then, plainly to her tell my loving tale. 

Q. Eliz. Plain and not honest is too harsh a style. 

K. Rich. Your reasons are too shallow and too quick. 

Q. Eliz. O, no, my reasons are too deep and dead ; "^^ 
Too deep and dead, poor infants, in their graves. 

K. Rich. Harp not on that string, madam ; that is past. 

Q. Eliz. Harp on it still shall I till heart-strings break. 

K. Rich. Now, by my George,^^ my garter, and my 
crown, — 

Q. Eliz. Profaned, dishonour'd, and the third usurp'd. 

K. Rich. — I swear — 

Q. Eliz. By nothing ; for this is no oath : 

Thy George, profaned, hath lost his holy honour ; 
Thy garter, blemish'd, pawn'd his knightly virtue ; 
Thy crown, usurp'd, disgraced his kingly glory. 
If something thou wouldst swear to be believed. 
Swear, then, by something that thou hast not wrong'd. 
K^ Rich. Now, by the world, — 

• Q. Eliz. 'Tis full of thy foul wrongs^ 

K. Rich. My father's death, — 

Q. Eliz. Thy life hath that dishonour'd. 

K. Rich. Then, by myself, — 

34 The Queen implies an equivoque on quick, which is used by Richard 
in the sense oi. prompt, nimble, ox I'ash; and she plays between this sense 
and that of alive. 

2^ This was a figure or image of St. George on horseback, which was 
worn as a badge by Knights of the Garter. 



1/2 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IV. 

Q. Eliz. Thyself is self- misused. 

K. Rich. Why, then by God,— 

Q. Eliz. God's wrong is most of alL 

If thou hadst fear'd to break an oath by Him, 
The unity the King thy brother made 
Had not been broken, nor my brother slain : 
If thou hadst fear'd to break an oath by Him, 
Th' imperial metal, circling now thy head. 
Had graced the tender temples of my child j 
And both the Princes had been breathing here, 
Which now, two tender bedfellows for dust. 
Thy broken faith hath made a prey for worms. 
What canst thou swear by now ? 

K. Rich. The time to come. 

Q. Eliz. That thou hast wronged in the time o'erpast ; 
For I myself have many tears to wash 
Hereafter time, for time past wrong'd by thee. 
The children live, whose parents thou hast slaughter'd, 
Ungovern'd youth, to wail it in their age ; 
The parents live, whose children thou hast butcher'd, 
Old wither' d plants, to wail it with their age. 
Swear not by time to come ; for that thou hast 
Misused ere used, by time misused o'erpast. 

K. Rich. As I intend to prosper and repent. 
So thrive I in my dangerous affairs 
Of hostile arms ! myself myself confound ! 
Heaven and fortune bar me happy hours ! 
Day, yield me not thy light ; nor, night, thy rest ! 
Be opposite all planets of good luck 
To my proceeding ! — if, with pure heart's love, 
Immaculate devotion, holy thoughts, 
I tender not thy beauteous princely daughter ! 



SCENE IV. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 1/3 

In her consists my happiness and thine ; 

Without her, follows to myself and thee, 

Herself, the land, and many a Christian sOul, 

Death, desolation, ruin, and decay : 

It cannot be avoided but by this ; 

It will not be avoided but by this. 

Therefore, dear mother, — I must call you so, — 

Be the attorney of my love to her : 

Plead what I will be, not what I have been ; 

Not my deserts, but what I will deserve : 

Urge the necessity and state of times. 

And be not peevish-fond ^^ in great designs. 

Q. Eliz. Shall I be tempted of the Devil thus ? 

K. Rich. Ay, if the Devil tempt thee to do good. 

Q. Eliz. Shall I forget myself to be myself? 

K. Rich. Ay, if yourself s remembrance wrong yourself. 

Q. Eliz. Shall I go win my daughter to thy will ? 

K. Rich. And be a happy mother by the deed. 

Q. Eliz. I go. — Write to me very shortly, 
And you shall understand from me her mind.^^ 

K. Rich. Bear her my true love's kiss ; and so, farewell. — 
\_Kissi71g her. Exit Quee?i Elizabeth. 
Relenting fool, and shallow- changing woman ! — 

Enter Ratcliff ; Cat'ESBY following. 

36 Both fond and peevish are often used by Shakespeare for foolish. So 
in scene 2 of this Act : " When Richmond was a little peevish boy." The 
compound seems to have about the same meaning as childish-foolish, which 
occurs in i. 3, of this play. Or peevish may here have the sense of perverse. 

37 This representation is in substance historical ; and some of the old 
chroniclers are rather hard on Elizabeth for thus yielding to Richard's per- 
suasions. But there is good reason to think that she outwitted him, and 
that her consent was but feigned in order to gain time, and to save her 
daughter from the fate that had overtaken her sons. 



174 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IV. 

How now ! what news ? 

Rat. My gracious sovereign, on the western coast 
Rideth a puissant navy ; to the shore 
Throng many doubtful hollow-hearted friends, 
Unarm'd and unresolved to beat them back : 
'Tis thought that Richmond is their admiral ; 
And there they hull,^^ expecting but the aid 
Of Buckingham to welcome them ashore. 

K. Rich. Some light-foot friend post to the Duke of Nor- 
folk : — 
Ratcliff, thyself, — or Catesby ; where is he? 

Cate. Here, my good lord. 

K. Rich. Fly to the duke. — [71? Ratcliff.] Post thou 
to Salisbury : 
When thou comest thither, — \To Catesby.] Dull, unmind- 
ful villain. 
Why stay' St thou here, and go'st not to the duke ? 

Cate. First, mighty liege, tell me your Highness' pleasure, 
What from, your Grace I shall deliver to him. 

K. Rich. O, true, good Catesby : bid him levy straight 
The greatest strength and power he can make, 
And meet me suddenly at Salisbury. 

Cate. I go. \_Exif. 

Rat. What, may it please you, shall I do at Salisbury ? 

K. Rich. Why, what wouldst thou do there before I go? 

Rat. Your Highness told me I should post before. 

Enter Stanley. 



38 A ship is said to hull when she hauls in her sails, and lays-to, without 
coming to anchor, and so floats hither and thither as the waves carry her. See 
Twelfth Night, page 50, note 18. — Expecting, here, is waiting for. Re- 
peatedly so. 



SCENE IV. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 1 75 

K. Rich. My mind is changed. — Stanley, what news with 
you? 

Stan. None good, my liege, to please you with the hearing ; 
Nor none so bad, but well may be reported. 

K. Rich. Heyday, a riddle ! neither good nor bad ! 
What need'st thou run so many miles about. 
When thou mayst tell thy tale the nearest way? 
Once more, what news ? 

Stan. Richmond is on the seas. 

K. Rich. There let him sink, and be the seas on him, 
White-liver'd runagate ! ^^ what doth he there ? 

Stan. I know not, mighty sovereign, but by guess. 

K. Rich. Well, as you guess ? 

Stan. Stirr'd up by Dorset, Buckingham, and Ely, 
He makes for England, here, to claim the crown. 

K. Rich. Is the chair empty? is the sword unsway'd? 
Is the King dead? the empire unpossess'd? 
What heir of York is there alive but we ? 
And who is England's King but great York's heir ? 
Then, tell me, what makes he upon the seas ? 

Stan. Unless for that, my liege, I cannot guess. 

K. Rich. Unless for that ^^ he comes to be your liege. 
You cannot guess wherefore the Welshman comes. 
Thou wilt revolt, and fly to him, I fear. 

Stan. No, mighty liege ; therefore mistrust me not. 

K. Rich. Where is thy power, then, to beat him back? 

39 Runagate is runaway or vagabond. White-liver' d, lily-liver' d, and 
milk-livered are terms denoting extreme cowardice. In v. 3, Richard calls 
Richmond " a milksop." Richmond had in fact escaped the fate of the 
Lancastrian leaders by fleeing into France. 

40 The words for that are here equivalent to because ; a common usage 
with the>old writers. Richard chooses to take the phrase in another sense 
than Stanley had meant. 



1/6 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IV. 

Where be thy tenants and thy followers ? 
Are they not now upon the western shore, 
Safe-c6nducting the rebels from their ships ? 

Stan. No, my good lord, my friends are in the North. 

K. Rich. Cold friends to me : what do they in the North, 
When they should serve their sovereign in the West ? 

Stan. They have not been commanded, mighty King : 
Pleaseth your Majesty to give me leave, 
I'll muster up my friends, and meet your Grace 
Where and what time your Majesty shall please. 

K. Rich. Ay, ay, thou wouldst be gone to join with Rich- 
mond : 
I will not trust you, sir. 

Stan. Most mighty sovereign. 

You have no cause to hold my friendship doubtful : 
I never was nor never will be false. 

K. Rich. Go, then, and muster men. But leave behind 
Your son, George Stanley : look your faith be firm. 
Or else his head's assurance is but frail. 

Stan. So deal with him as I prove true to you. \_Exit 

Enter a Messenger. 

Mess. My gracious sovereign, now in Devonshire, 
As I by friends am well adv^rtised,^^ 
Sir Edward Courtney, and the haughty prelate 
Bishop of Exeter, his elder brother. 
With many more confederates, are in arms. 

Enter a second Messenger. 

2 Mess. In Kent, my liege, the Guildfords are in arms j 

41 Advertised for informed, notified, or instructed, occurs repeatedly. 



SCENE IV. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. I// 

And every hour more competitors ^^ 

Flock to the rebels, and their power grows strong. 

Enter a third Messenger. 

3 Mess. My lord, the army of great Buckingham — 

K, Rich, Out on ye, owls ! nothing but songs of death? ^3 

\_Strikes him. 
There, take thou that, till thou bring better news. 

S Mess. The news I have to tell your Majesty 
Is, that by sudden floods and fall of waters, 
Buckingham's army is dispersed and scatter'd ; 
And he himself wander'd away alone. 
No man knows whither. 

K. Rich. O, I cry thee mercy : 

There is my purse to cure that blow of thine. 
Hath any well-advised friend proclaim'd 
Reward to him that brings the traitor in ? 

S Mess. Such proclamation hath been made, my lord. 
Enter a fourth Messenger. 

4 Mess. Sir Thomas Lovel and Lord Marquess Dorset, 
'Tis said, my liege, in Yorkshire are in arms. 

But this good comfort bring I to your Highness, 
The Bretagne navy is dispersed by tempest : 
Richmond, in Dorsetshire, sent out a boat 
Unto the shore, to ask those on the banks 
If they were his assistants, yea or no ; 
Who answer'd him, they came from Buckingham 
Upon his party : ^^ he, mistrusting them, 

*2 Competitors for confederates or partners. See Twelfth Night, page 
114, note 3. 

^3 The owl's note or hoot w*as considered ominous or ill-boding. 
44 " "Upon his party " is to take part with him ; to fight on his side. 



1/8 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT IV. 

Hoised sail, and made his course again for Bretagne. 

K, Rich. March on, march on, since we are up in arms ; 
If not to fight with foreign enemies. 
Yet to beat down these rebels here at home. 

Re-enter Catesby. 

Cate. My liege, the Duke of Buckingham is taken, — 
That is the best news : that the Earl of Richmond 
Is with a mighty power landed at Milford, 
Is colder tidings, yet they must be told.^^ . 

K. Rich. Away towards Salisbury ! while we reason here,^^ 
A royal battle might be won and lost : — "" 

Some one take order ^''' Buckingham be brought 
To Salisbury ; the rest march on with me. [Flourish. Exeunt. 



Scene V. — A Room in Lord Stanley's House. 

Enter Stanley and Sir Christopher Urswick. 

Stan. Sir Christopher, tell Richmond this from me : 
That, in the sty of the most bloody boar. 
My son George Stanley is frank'd up in hold : 
If I revolt, off goes young George's head ; 
The fear of that holds off my present aid. 
But, tell me, where is princely Richmond now? 

45 The Earl of Richmond embarked with about two thousand men at 
Harfleur, in Normandy, August i, 1485, and landed at Milford Haven on 
the 7th. He directed his course to Wales, hoping the Welsh would receive 
him cordially as their countryman, he having been born at Pembroke, and 
his grandfather being Owen Tudor, who married Catharine of France, the 
widow of Henry the Fifth and mother of Henry the Sixth. 

46 That is, " while we are talking here." See page 103, note 4. 

47 To take order is, in old English, to adopt measures, or give directions. 



SCENE I. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 1^9 

Chris. At Pembroke, or at Ha'rford-West,i in Wales. 

Sta7t. What men of name resort to him ? 

Chris. Sir Walter Herbert, a renowned soldier ; 
Sir Gilbert Talbot, Sir William Stanley j 
Oxford, redoubted Pembroke, Sir James Blunt, 
And Rice ap Thomas, with a valiant crew ; 
And many more of noble fame and worth : 
And towards London they do. bend ^ their course 
If by the way they be not fought withal. 

Stmt. Return unto thy lord ; commend me to him : 
Tell him the Queen hath heartily consented 
He shall espouse Elizabeth her daughter. 
These letters will resolve ^ him of my mind. [ Giving letters. 
Farewell. \_Exeunt. 



ACT V. 

Scene I. — Salisbury. An open Place. 

Enter the Sheriff, and Guard, with Buckingham, led to 

Execution. 

Buck. Will not King Richard let me speak with him ? 

Sher. No, my good lord ; therefore be patient. 

Buck. Hastings, and Edward's children. Rivers, Grey, 
Holy King Henry, and thy fair son Edward, 
Vaughan, and all that have miscarried 
By underhand corrupted foul injustice, — 

1 This name in full is Haver/or d-VJesi ; shortened for metre's sake, of 
course. The place lies nearly north of Pembroke. 

2 To bend occurs often in the sense of to direct. 

s Resolve, again, for inform or satisfy. See page 149, note 3. 



l80 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT v. 

If that your moody discontented souls 
Do through the clouds behold this present hour, 
Even for revenge mock my destruction ! — 
This is All-Souls' day, fellows, is it not ? 

Sher, It is, my lord. 

Buck. Why, then All-Souls' day ^ is my body's doomsday. 
This is the day that, in King Edward's time, 
I wish'd might fall on me, when I was found 
False to his children or his wife's allies ; 
This is the day wherein I wish'd to fall 
By the false faith of him I trusted most ; 
This, this All-Souls' day to my fearful soul 
Is the determined respite of my wrongs : ^ 
That high All-seer that I daUied with 
Hath turn'd my feigned prayer on my head. 
And given in earnest what I begg'd in jest. 
Thus doth He force the swords of wicked men 
To turn their own points on their masters' bosoms : 
Thus Margaret's curse falls heavy on my neck : 
When he, quoth she, shall split thy heart with sorrow, 
Remember Margaret was a prophetess. — 
Come, sirs, convey me to the block of shame ; 
Wrong hath but wrong, and blame the due of blame. 

\_Exeunf. 

1 Buckingham was executed on All-Saints' day, November i, 1483. 

2 That is, " the close or termination of the period for which the punish- 
ment of my crimes was deferred. 



SCENE II. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. l8l 



Scene IL — Plain near Tamworth. 

Enter, with drum and colours, Richmond,^ Oxford/ Sir 
James Blunt, Sir Walter Herbert, and others, with 
Forces, marching. 

Richm. Fellows in arms, and my most loving friends. 
Bruised underneath the yoke of tyranny. 
Thus far into the bowels of the land 
Have we march'd on without impediment ; 
And here receive we from our father Stanley 
Lines of fair comfort and encouragement. 
The wretched, bloody, and usurping boar, 
That spoils your summer fields and fruitful vines. 
Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough 
In your embowell'd bosoms, — this foul swine 
Lies now even in the centre of this isle, 
Near to the town of Leicester, as we learn : 
From Tamworth thither is but one day's march. 
In God's name, cheerly on, courageous friends, 
To reap the harvest of perpetual peace 
By this one bloody trial of sharp war. 

8 It has already been noted that on his father's side the Earl of Richmond 
was grandson to Owen Tudor. His mother was Margaret, daughter and 
heir to John Beaufort, the first Duke of Somerset, and great-granddaughter 
to John of Ghent by Catharine Swynford; on which account, after the 
death of Henry VI. and his son, Richmond was looked to by both friends 
and foes as the next male representative of the Lancastrian line. The Lan- 
castrians all regarded him as their natural chief; and many of the Yorkists 
accepted him because of his having bound himself by solemn oath to marry 
the Princess Elizabeth, whom they of course considered the rightful heir to 
the crown after the death of her brothers. 

4 This>Earl of Oxford was John de Vere, whose character, together with 
that of his son Arthur, is so finely delineated in Scott's Anne of Geiersteln. 



1 82 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT v. 

Oxf. Every man's conscience is a thousand swords, 
To fight against this guilty homicide. 

Herb. I doubt not but his friends will turn to us. 

Blunt. He hath no friends but what are friends for fear, 
Which in his dearest need will shrink from him. 

Richm, All for our vantage. Then, in God's name, 
march : 
True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings ; 
Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings. \Exeunt. 



Scene III. — Bosworth Field. 

Enter King Richard and Forces, the Duke of Norfolk, 
Earl of '^UKREY , and others. 

K. Rich. Here pitch our tents, even here in Bosworth 
field.— 
My Lord of Surrey, why look you so sad ? 

Sur. My heart is ten times lighter than my looks. 

K. Rich. My Lord of Norfolk, — 

Nor. Here, most gracious liege. 

K. Rich. Norfolk, we must have knocks ; ha ! must we 
not? 

Nor. We must both give and take, my loving lord. 

K. Rich. Up with my tent ! here will I lie to-night ; 

\Soldiers begin to set up his tent 
But where to-morrow ? Well, all's one for that. — 
Who hath descried the number of the traitors ? 

Nor. Six or seven thousand is their utmost power. 

K. Rich. Why, our battalia trebles that account : ^ 

1 Richmond's forces are said to have been only five thousand; and 
Richard's armv consisted of about twelve thousand. But Lord Stanley lay 



SCENE III. KING RICHARD THE THIRD, 1 83 

Besides, the King's name is a tower of strength, 

Which they upon the adverse party want. — 

Up with the tent ! — Come, noble gentlemen. 

Let us survey the vantage of the ground ; 

Call for some men of sound direction : ^ 

Let's lack no discipline, make no delay ; 

For, lords, to-morrow is a busy day. \Exeunt 

Enter, on the other side of the field, Richmond, Sir William 
Brandon, Oxford, and others. Some of the Soldiers 
pitch Richmond's tent. 

Richm. The weary Sun hath made a golden set, 
And, by the bright track of his fiery car, 
Gives token of a goodly day to-morrow. — 
Sir William Brandon, you shall bear my standard. — 
Give me some ink and paper in my tent ; 
I'll draw the form and model of our battle. 
Limit 3 each leader to his several charge, 
And part in just proportion our small power. — 
My Lord of Oxford, — you. Sir William Brandon, — 
And you. Sir Walter Herbert, — stay with me. — 

The Earl of Pembroke keeps his regiment : ^ — 

« 

at a small distance with three thousand men, and Richard may be sup- 
posed to have reckoned on them as his friends, though the event proved 
otherwise. 

2 Men of tried judgment and approved military skill. 

8 That is, direct or appoint the leaders what part they are separately to 
perform in the forthcoming conflict. The Poet has to limit repeatedly so. 
See page 121, note 1. 

* "Keeps his regiment " is, in our phrase, remains with his command ; 
regiment being used, not for the regimental portion of an army, but in the 
old sense ol government. So, in the next speech, it is said that Lord Stan- 
ley's " regiment lies half a mile at least south from the mighty power of the 
King. — Keep is repeatedly used by the Poet for dwell or stay. 



184 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT V. 

Good Captain Blunt, bear my good-night to him, 
And by the second hour in the morning 
Desire the earl to see me in my tent : 
Yet one thing more, good captain, do for me, — 
Where is Lord Stanley quarter'd,^ do you know? 

Blunt. Unless I have mista'en his colours much, — 
Which well I am assured I have not done, — 
His regiment lies half a mile at least 
South from the mighty power of the King. 

Richm. If without peril it be possible. 
Sweet Blunt, make some good means to speak with him, 
And give him from me this most needful note. 

Blunt. Upon my life, my lord, I'll undertake it ; 
And so, God give you quiet rest to-night ! 

Richm. Good night, good Captain Blunt. [^^// Blunt.] 
— Come, gentlemen. 
Let us consult upon to-morrow's business : 
In to my tent ; the air is raw and cold. 

\They withdraw into the tent. 

Re-enter, to his tent, King Richard, Norfolk, Ratcliff, 

Catesby, and others. 
ft 
K. Rich. What is't o'clock? 

Cate. It's supper-time, my lord ; 

It's nine o'clock. 

K. Rich. I will not sup to-night. — 

What, is my beaver easier than it was?^ 



5 To quarter is still in use as a military term for to lodge or encamp. 

6 The heaver was a part of the helmet fixed on a sort of hinge at the ear, 
so as to be drawn down over the face or pushed up over the forehead, as the 
wearer chose or had occasion. It is probably in reference to this motion 
that easier is used of it. 



SCENE III. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 1 85 

And all my armour laid into my tent ? 

Cate. It is, my liege ; and all things are in readiness. 

K. Rich. Good Norfolk, hie thee to thy charge ; 
Use careful watch, choose trusty sentinels. 

Nor. I go, my lord. 

K. Rich. Stir with the lark to-morrow, gentle Norfolk. 

Nor. I warrant you, my lord. \^Exit 

K. Rich. Catesby, — 

Cate. My lord? 

K. Rich. Send out a pursuivant-at-arms 

To Stanley's regiment ; bid him bring his power 
Before sunrising, lest his son George fall 
Into the blind cave of eternal night. — \_Exit Catesby. 

Fill me a bowl of wine. — Give me a watch."^ — 
Saddle white Surrey for the field to-morrow. — 
Look that my staves ^ be sound, and not too heavy. — 
RatcHff, — 

Rat My lord? 

K. Rich. Saw'st thou the melancholy Lord Northumber- 
land? 

Rat, Thomas the Earl of Surrey, and himself, 
Much about cock-shut time,^ from troop to troop 

7 In calling for a watch Richard evidently does not mean a sentinel; for 
that guard should be kept about his tent was a matter of course. The 
watch called for is, no doubt, a watch-light, which was a night-candle so 
marked as to indicate how long it had burned, and thus serve the purpose 
of a modern watch. 

8 That is, the staves or poles of his lances. It was the custom to carry 
more than one into the field. 

9 A cock-shut was a large net stretched across a glade, and so suspended 
upon poles as easily to be drawn together, and was employed to catch 
woodcocks. These nets were chiefly used in the twilight of the evening, 
when woodcocks " take wing to go and get water, flying generally low ; and 
when they find any thoroughfare, through a wood or range of trees, they 



1 86 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT V, 

Went through the army, cheering up the soldiers. 

K. Rich. So, I am satisfied. — Give me a bowl of wine ; 
I have not that alacrity of spirit, 

Nor cheer of mind, that I was wont to have. [ Wine brought 
Well, set it down. — Is ink and paper ready ? 

Rat. It is, my lord. 

K. Rich. Bid my guard watch ; leave me. — Ratcliff, 
About the mid of night come to my tent 
And help to arm me. — Leave me, I say. 

[King Richard, retires into his tent, and sleeps. 
Exeunt Ratcliff and others, 

Richmond's tent opens , and discovers him and his Officers, 6^^, 

Enter Stanley. 

Stan. Fortune and victory sit on thy helm ! 

Richm. All comfort that the dark night can afford 
Be to thy person, noble father-in-law ! 
Tell me, how fares our loving mother ? 

Stan. I, by attorney, bless thee fi'om thy mother, 
Who prays continually for Richmond's good : 
So much for that. — -The silent hours steal on, 
And flaky darkness breaks within the East. 
In brief, —for so the season bids us be, — 
Prepare thy battle early in the morning. 
And put thy fortune to th' arbitrement 
Of bloody strokes and mortal-staring war.^® 

venture through.*' The artificial glades made for them to pass through 
were called cock-xooAs. Hence cock-shut time and cock-shut light were 
used to express the evening twilight. 

10 "Mortal staring war " sounds rather odd and harsh, but probably 
means war looking with deadly eye, or staring fatally, on its victims. So 
the Poet very often uses mortal for that which kills, not that which dies 



SCENE III. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 18/ 

I, as I may, — that which I would I cannot, — 

With best advantage will deceive the time, 

And aid thee in this doubtful shock of arms : 

But on thy side I may not be too forward. 

Lest, being seen, thy brother, tender George, 

Be executed in his father's sight. 

Farewell : the leisure ^^ and the fearful time 

Cuts off the ceremonious vows of love 

And ample interchange of sweet discourse, 

Which so-long-sunder'd friends should dwell upon : 

God give us leisure for these rites of love ! 

Once more, adieu : be valiant, and speed well ! 

Richm, Good lords, conduct him to his regiment : 
I'll strive, with troubled thoughts, to take a nap, 
Lest leaden slumber peise ^^ me down to-morrow, 
When I should mount with wings of victory : 
Once more, good night, kind lords and gentlemen. — 

\_Exeunt Officers, ^'c, with Stanley, 
O Thou, whose captain I account myself, 
Look on my forces with a gracious eye ; 
Put in their hands Thy bruising irons of wrath, 
That they may crush down with a heavy fall 
Th* usurping helmets of our adversaries ! 
Make us Thy ministers of chastisement, 
That we may praise Thee in the victory ! 
To Thee I do commend my watchful soul, 
Ere I let fall the windows of mine eyes : 

11 We still have a phrase equivalent to this, however harsh it may seem : 
" I would do this if leisure would permit " ; where leism-e stands for want 
of leisure. So in King Richard II., i. i : " Which then our leisure would 
not let jis hear." See As You Like It, page 79, note 7. 

''■2 Peise is an old form oi poise, weigh ; much used in the Poet's time. 



1 88 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT V. 

Sleeping and waking, O, defend me still ! \Sleeps. 

The Ghost of Prince Edward, son to King Henry the Sixth, 
rises between the two tents. 

Ghost of P. E. \To K. Rich.] Let me sit heavy on thy 
soul to-morrow ! 
Think, how thou stabb'dst me in my prime of youth 
At Tewksbury : despair, theref6re, and die ! — 
\To RiCHM.] Be cheerful, Richmond ; for the wronged souls 
Of butcher'd princes fight in thy behalf : 
King Henry's issue, Richmond, comforts thee. 

The Ghost of King Henry the Sixth rises. 

Ghost of K. H. \To K. Rich.] When I was mortal, my 
anointed body 
By thee was punched full of deadly holes : 
Think on the Tower and me : despair, and die ; 
Harry the Sixth bids thee despair and die ! — 
\To RiCHM.] Virtuous and holy, be thou conqueror ! 
Harry, that prophesied thou shouldst be king, 
Doth comfort thee in sleep : live thou, and flourish ! 

The Ghost of Clarence rises. 

Ghost of C. \To K. Rich.] Let me sit heavy on thy soul 
to-morrow ! 
I, that was wash'd to death with fulsome wine,^^ 
Poor Clarence, by thy guile betray'd to death ! 

13 Fulsome probably has reference to the qualities of Malmsey wine, 
which was peculiarly sweet and luscious, so much so as to cloy the appetite 
after a little drinking. — The Poet has represented Clarence as having been 
killed before he was thrown into the butt of wine. But one report gave it 
that he was drowned in such a cask of drink. 



SCENE III. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 1 89 

To-morrow in the battle think on me, 

And fall thy edgeless sword : despair, and die ! — 

[71? RiCHM.] Thou offspring of the House of Lancaster, 

The wronged heirs of York do pray for thee : 

Good angels guard thy battle ! live, and flourish ! 

The Ghosts of Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan, rise. 

Ghost of R. \To K. Rich.] Let me sit heavy on thy soul 
to-morrow, 
Rivers, that died at Pomfret ! despair, and die ! 

Ghost of G. ITo K. Rich.] Think upon Grey, and let 

thy soul despair ! 
Ghost of V. \To K. Rich.] Think upon Vaughan, and, 
with guilty fear. 
Let fall thy pointless lance : despair, and die ! 

All thi-ee. \To Richm.] Awake, and think our wrongs in 
Richard's bosom 
Will conquer him ! awake, and win the day ! 

The Ghost of Hastings rises. 

Ghost of H. \To K. Rich.] Bloody and guilty, guiltily 
awake. 
And in a bloody battle end thy days ! 
Think on Lord Hastings : so despair, and die ! — 
\To Richm.] Quiet untroubled soul, awake, awake ! 
Arm, fight, and conquer, for fair England's sake ! 

The Ghosts of the two young Princes rise. 

Ghosts of the two P. {To K. Rich.] Dream on thy 
cousins smother'd in the Tower : 
Let us be lead within thy bosom, Richard, 
And 'weigh thee down to ruin, shame, and death ! 



190 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT V. 

Thy nephews' souls bid thee despair and die ! — 

^To RiCHM.] Sleep, Richmond, sleep in peace, and wake 

in joy ; 
Good angels guard thee from the boar's annoy I 
Live, and beget a happy race of kings ! 
Edward's unhappy sons do bid thee flourish. 

TAe Ghost of Queen Anne rises. 

Ghost of Q. A. \To K. Rich.] Richard, thy wife, that 
wretched Anne thy wife. 
That never slept a quiet hour with thee, 
Now fills thy sleep with perturbations : 
To-morrow in the battle think on me. 
And fall thy edgeless sword : despair, and die ! — 
\To RiCHM.] Thou quiet soul, sleep thou a quiet sleep; 
Dream of success and happy victory ! 
Thy adversary's wife doth pray for thee. 

The 6^/^^j-/<7/" Buckingham rises. 

Ghost of B. {To K. Rich.] The first was I that help'd 
thee to the crown ; 
The last was I that felt thy tyranny : 
O, in the battle think on Buckingham, 
And die in terror of thy guiltiness ! 
Dream on, dream on, of bloody deeds and death : 
Fainting, despair ; despairing, yield thy breath ! — 
\_To Richm.] I died for hope^^ ere I could lend thee aid : 
But cheer thy heart, and be thou not dismay'd : 
God and good angels fight on Richmond's side ! 

14 Buckingham's hope of aiding Richmond induced him to take up arms ; 
he lost his hfe in consequence, and therefore may be said to have died for 
hope ; hope being the cause which led to that event. 



SCENE HI. KING RICHARD THE THIRD I9I 

And Richard fall in height of all his pride ! ^^ 

\_The Ghosts vanish. King Richard starts out 

of his dream. 
K, Rich. Give me another horse, — bind up my wounds, — 
Have mercy, Jesu ! — Soft ! I did but dream. — 

coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me ! — 
The lights burn blue. — It is now dead midnight. 
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh. 
What do I fear? myself? there's none else by : 
Richard loves Richard ; that is, I am I. 

Is there a murderer here ? No ; — yes, I am : 

Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why, — 

Lest I revenge myself upon myself. 

Alack, I love myself. Wherefore ? for any good 

That I myself have done unto myself? 

O, no ! alas, I rather hate myself 

For hateful deeds committed by myself ! 

1 am a villain : yet I lie, I am not. 

Fool, of thyself speak well : — fool, do not flatter. 
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, 
And every tongue brings in a several tale. 
And every tale condemns me for a villain. 
Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree ; 



15 In this series of speeches the Poet has with happy effect given a " local 
habitation and a name " to what is thus stated in the Chronicles : " The 
fame went, that he had the same night a terrible dreame ; for it seemed to 
him, being asleepe, that he did see diverse images hke terrible divels, which 
pulled and haled him, not sufifering him to take anie quiet or rest. The 
which strange vision not so suddenlie strake his heart with feare, but it 
stuffed his head with many busie and dreadfuU imaginations. For incon- 
tinent after, his heart being almost damped, he prognosticated the doubtfull 
chance of the battle, not using the alacritie and mirth of mind and counte- 
nance as he was accustomed to doo." 



192 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT V. 

Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree ; 
All several sins, all used in each degree, 
Throng to the bar, crying all Guilty I guilty ! 
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me ; 
And, if I die, no soul shall pity me : 
Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself 
Find in myself no pity to myself? ^^ 

Re-enter Ratcliff. 

Rat My lord, — 

K, Rich. Who's there ? 

Rat. My lord, 'tis I. The early village-cock 
Hath twice done salutation to the morn ; 
Your friends are up, and buckle on their armour. 

K. Rich. O Ratcliff, I have dream'd a fearful dream ! 
What thinkest thou, will our friends prove all true ? 

Rat. No doubt, my lord. 

K. Rich. O Ratcliff, I fear, I fear ! 

Methought the souls of all that I had murder'd 
Came to my tent ; and every one did threat 
To-morrow's vengeance on the head of Richard. 

Rat. Nay, good my lord, be not afraid of shadows. 

K. Rich. By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night 
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard 
Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers 
Armed in proof ^'' and led by shallow Richmond. 
It is not yet near day. Come, go with me ; 

16 In this strange speech there are some ten lines in or near the Poet's 
best style ; the others are in his worst ; so inferior indeed, that it is not easy 
to understand how Shakespeare could have written them at all. 

1" " Arm^d m. proof is encased in armour that is proof against warlike 
weapons. Probably the phrase is meant to include offensive as well as de- 
fensive armour. 



SCENE III. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 1 93 

Under our tents I'll play the eaves-dropper, 
To hear if any mean to shrink from me. 

\_Exeunt King Richard and Ratcliff. 

Re-enter Oxford, with other Lords, &'c. 

Lords. Good morrow, Richmond ! 

Richm. [ Wakingr\ Cry mercy, lords and watchful gen- 
tlemen. 
That you have ta'en a tardy sluggard here. 

Lords. How have you slept, my lord ? 

Richm. The sweetest sleep, and fairest-boding dreams 
That ever enter'd in a drowsy head. 
Have I since your departure had,- my lords. 
Methought their souls, whose bodies Richard murder'd, 
Came to my tent, and cried. On / victory ! 
I promise you, my heart is very jocund 
In the remembrance of so fair a dream. 
How far into the morning is it, lords ? 

Lords. Upon the stroke of four. 

Richm. Why, then 'tis time to arm and give direction. — 

\_He advances to the Troops, 
More than I have said, loving countrymen. 
The leisure ^^ and enforcement of the time 
Forbids to dwell upon : yet remember this, 
God and our good cause fight upon our side ; 
The prayers of holy saints and wronged souls. 
Like high-rear'd bulwarks, stand before our faces ; 
Richard except, those whom we fight against 
Had rather have us win than him they follow : 
For what is he they follow ? truly, gentlemen, 
A bloody tyrant and a homicide ; 

is Leisure, again, for want of leisure. See page 187, note ll. 



194 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT V. 

One raised in blood, and one in blood establish 'd ; 

One that made means to come by what he hath, 

And slaughter' d those that were the means to help him ; 

A base foul stone, made precious by the foil 

Of England's chair, where he is falsely set ; i^ 

One that hath ever been God's enemy : 

Then, if you fight against God's enemy, 

God will, in justice, ward you as His soldiers ; 

If you do sweat to put a tyrant down, 

You sleep in peace, the tyrant being slain ; 

If you do fight against your country's foes. 

Your country's fat shall pay your pains the hire ; 

If you do fight in safeguard of your wives. 

Your wives shall welcome home the conquerors ; 

If you do free your children from the sword. 

Your children's children quit^o it in your age. 

Then, in the name of God and all these rights. 

Advance your standards, draw your willing swords. 

For me, the ransom of my bold attempt 

Shall be this cold corpse on the earth's cold face ; 

But if I thrive, the gain of my attempt 

The least of you shall share his part thereof. — 

Sound drums and trumpets, boldly, cheerfully ; 

God and Saint George ! Richmond and victory ! {^Exeunt. 

Re-enter King Richard, Ratcliff, Attendants, and Forces. 

K. Rich. What said Northumberland as touching Rich- 
mond? 
Rat. That he was never trained up in arms. 

19 '• England's chair " is the throne. The allusion is to the practice of 
setting gems of little worth, with a bright-coloured /oz7 under them. 

20 Quit, again, in the sense of requite. See page 157, note 3. 



SCENE III. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. I95 

K. Rich. He said the truth : and what said Surrey then ? 

Rat. He smiled, and said, The better for our purpose. 

K. Rich. He was i' the right ; and so indeed it is. — 

\Clock strikes. 
Tell the clock there. — Give me a calendar. — 

Who saw the Sun to-day ? 

Rat. Not I, my lord. 

K. Rich. Then he disdains to shine ; for, by the book, 
He should have braved ^^ the East an hour ago : 
A black day will it be to somebody. — 
Ratcliff,— 

Rat. My lord? 

K. Rich. The Sun will not be seen to-day ; 

The sky doth frown and lour upon our army. 
I would these dewy tears were from the ground. 
Not shine to-day ! Why, what is that to me 
More than to Richmond ? for the selfsame heaven 
That frowns on me looks sadly upon him. 

Enter Norfolk. 

Nor. Arm, arm, my lord ; the foe vaunts in the field. 

K. Rich. Come, bustle, bustle ; — caparison my horse ; — 
Call up Lord Stanley, bid him bring his power : 
I will lead forth my soldiers to the plain, 
And thus my battle shall be ordered : 
My foreward shall be drawn out all in length, 
Consisting equally of Horse and Foot ; 
Our archers shall be placed in the midst : 
John Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Earl of Surrey, 
Shall have the leading of this Foot and Horse. 
They thus directed, we ourself will follow 

21 To brave is, in one of its senses, to make fine, splendid, or glorious 



196 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT V. 

In the main battle ; whose puissance on either side 
Shall be well winged with our chiefest Horse. 
This, and Saint George to boot! 22 — What think'st thou, 
Norfolk? 

Nor. A good direction, warlike sovereign. — 
This found I on my tent this morning. [ Giving a scroll. 

K. Rich. [Reads.] Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold^ 
For Dickon thy master is bought and sold?"^ 
A thing devised by the enemy. — 
Go, gentlemen, every man unto his charge : 
Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls ; 
Conscience is but a word that cowards use. 
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe : 
Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law. 
March on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell ; 
If not to Heaven, then hand in hand to Hell. — 
\To his Soldiers.] What shall I say more than I have inferr'd P^^ 
Remember whom you are to cope withal ; 
A sort 2^ of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways, 

22 This, and Saint George to help us, into the bargain. 

23 So in the Chronicles : " John duke of Norifolke was warned by diverse 
to refrain from the field, insomuch that the night before he should set for- 
ward toward the king, one wrote this rime upon his gate : 

Jocke of Norffolke, be not too bold, 

For Dickon thy maister is bought and sold." 

Jocky and Dickon were familiar forms of John and Richard. — Bought and 
sold was a sort of proverbial phrase for hopelessly ruined by treacherous 
practices. 

24 Here again we have inferred for brought forward or alleged. 

25 Sort here means crew, pack, or set. So in 2 Henry VI., iii. 2 : " He 
was the lord ambassador sent from a sort of tinkers to the King." And in 
A Midsummer-Night's Dream, iii. 2, Puck describes Bottom as " the shal- 
lowest thickskin of that barren sort "; referring to the " crew of patches * 
who are getting up the mterlude of Pyramus and Thisbe. 



SCENE III. KING RICHARD THE THIRD, IQ/ 

A scum of Bretagnes, and base lacquey peasants, 

Whom their o'er-cloyed country vomits forth 

To desperate ventures and assured destruction. 

You sleeping safe, they bring to you unrest ; 

You having lands, and bless'd with beauteous wives, 

They would distrainee ^^g one, distain the other. 

And who doth lead them but a paltry fellow. 

Long kept in Bretagne at our mother's cost?27 

A milk-sop, one that never in his life 

Felt so much cold as over shoes in snow? 

Let's whip these stragglers o'er the seas again ; 

Lash hence these overweening rags of France, 

These famish'd beggars, weary of their lives ; 

Who, but for dreaming on this fond exploit. 

For want of means, poor rats, had hang'd themselves : 

If we be conquer'd, let men conquer us. 

And not these bastard Bretagnes ; whom our fathers 

Have in their own land beaten, bobb'd, and thump'd. 

And, on rec6rd, left them the heirs of shame. 

Shall these enjoy our lands ? \_Drum afar off.'] Hark ! I hear 

their drum. — 
Fight, gentlemen of England ! fight, bold yeomen ! 

26 Distrain is here used in its old sense of lawless seizure. See King 
Richard II., page 94, note 13. 

27 This should be " at our brother's cost." Richmond was in fact held in 
a sort of honourable custody at the Duke of Bretagne's Court, his means 
being supplied by Charles, Duke of Burgundy, who was Richard's brother- 
in-law. Hall gives the matter thus : " And to begyn with the earle of Rich- 
mond Captaine of this rebellion, he is a Welsh mylkesoppe, a man of small 
courage, and of lesse experience in marcyall acts and feates of warr, brought 
up by my brothers meanes and myne like a captive in a close cage in the 
court of Frances duke of Britaine." Holinshed copied Hall's account, but 
in Holinshed's second edition " moothers meanes " got misprinted for 
" brothers meanes " ; and hence the Poet's mistake. 



198 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT V. 

Draw, archers, draw your arrows to the head ! 
Spur your proud horses hard, and ride in blood ; 
Amaze the welkin with your broken staves l^^ — 

Enter a Messenger. 

What says Lord Stanley? will he bring his power? 

Mess, My lord, he doth deny to come. 

K, Rich. Off with his son George's head ! 

Nor. My lord, the enemy is past the marsh : ^9 
After the battle let George Stanley die. 

K. Rich. A thousand hearts are great within my bosom : 
Advance our standards, set upon our foes ; 
Our ancient word of courage, fair Saint George, 
Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons ! 
Upon them ! Victory sits on our helms. \_Exeunt. 

Scene IV. — Another Part of the Field. 

Alarums : excursions. Enter Norfolk and Forces ; to him 

Catesby. 

Cate. Rescue, my Lord of Norfolk, rescue, rescue ! 
The King enacts more wonders than a man, 
Daring an opposite to every danger : 1 

28 Fright the skies with the shivers of your lances. 

29 Betweene both armies there was a great marish, which the earle of 
Richmond left on his right hand ; for this intent, that it should be on that 
side a defense for his part, and in so dooing he had the sunne at his backe, 
and in the faces of his enimies. When king Richard saw the earles com- 
panie was passed the marish, he did command with all hast to set upon 
them. — HOLINSHED. 

1 The Poet repeatedly uses opposite for opponent or adversary. So that 
" daring an opposite to every danger " probably means offering himself as 
an opponent in every danger, or, which comes to the same thing, challenging 
every dangerous antagonist to fight with him. 



SCENE V. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 1 99 

His horse is slain, and all on foot he fights, 
Seeking for Richmond in the throat of death. 
Rescue, fair lord, or else the day is lost ! 

Alarums. Enter King Richard. 

K. Rich. A horse ! a horse ! my kingdom for a horse ! 

Gate. Withdraw, my lord ; I'll help you to a horse. 

K. Rich. Slave, I have set my life upon a cast, 
And I will stand the hazard of the die : 
I think there be six Richmonds in the field ; 
Five have I slain to-day instead of him.^ — 
A horse ! a horse ! my kingdom for a horse ! {Exeunt 

Scene V. — Another Part of the Field. 

Ala7'ums. Enter, from opposite sides, King Richard and 
Richmond; they fight ^ and exeunt fighting. Retreat and 
flourish. Then re-enter Richmond, with Stanley bearing 
the crown, and divers other Lords, and Forces. 

Richm. God and your arms be praised, victorious friends ; 
The day is ours, the bloody dog is dead. 

2 Shakespeare employs this incident with historical propriety in The 
First Part of King Henry IV. He had here also good ground for his 
poetical exaggeration. Richard, according to the Chronicles, was deter- 
mined if possible to engage with Richmond in single combat. For this 
purpose he rode furiously to that quarter of the field where the Earl was ; 
attacked his standard bearer, Sir William Brandon, and killed him ; then 
assaulted Sir John Cheney, whom he overthrew. Having thus at length 
cleared his way to his antagonist, he engaged in single combat with him, 
and probably would have been victorious, but that at that instant Sir 
William Stanley with three thousand men joined Richmond's army, and 
the royal forces fled with great precipitation. Richard was soon afterwards 
overpowered by numbers, and fell, fighting bravely to the last. 



200 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ACT V 

Stan. Courageous Richmond, well hast thou acquit ^ thee 
Lo, here, this long-usurped royalty 
From the dead temples of this bloody wretch 
Have I pluck'd off, to grace thy brows withal : 
Wear it, enjoy it, and make much of it. 

Richm. Great God of Heaven, say Amen to all ! — 
But, tell me now, is young George Stanley living? 

Stan. He is, my lord, and safe in Leicester town ; 
Whither, if 't please you, we may now withdraw us. 

Richm. What men of name are slain on either side ? 

Stan. John Duke of Norfolk, Walter Lord Ferrers, 
Sir Robert Brakenbury, and Sir William Brandon. 

Richm. Inter their bodies as becomes their births : 
Proclaim a pardon to the soldiers fled 
That in submission will return to us : 
And then, as we have ta'en the Sacrament, 
We will unite the white rose and the red : — 
Smile Heaven upon this fair conjunction, 
That long hath frown'd upon their enmity ! — 
What traitor hears me, and says not Amen ? 
England hath long been mad and scarr'd herself | 
The brother blindly shed the brother's blood, 
The father rashly slaughter'd his own son. 
The son, compell'd, been butcher to the sire : 
All this divided York and Lancaster, 
O, now let Richmond and Elizabeth, 
The true succeeders of each royal House, — 
Divided in their dire division, — 
By God's fair ordinance conjoin together ! 
And let their heirs — God, if Thy will be so — 

3 Acquit for acquitted. See page 85, note 14, and page 122, note 2. 



SCENE IV. KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 20I 



Enrich the time to come with smooth-faced peace, 

With smihng plenty, and fair prosperous days ! 

Abate ^ the edge of traitors, gracious Lord, 

That would reduce ^ these bloody days again. 

And make poor England weep in streams of blood ! 

Let them not live to taste this land's increase 

That would with treason wound this fair land's peace ! 

Now civil wounds are stopp'd, peace lives again : 

That she may long live here, God say Amen ! \_Exeunt, 

4 Abate here means maks dull, like rebate. So, in Love's Labours Lost, 
i. I : " That honour which shall 'bate his scythe's keen edge." Also, in the 
novel of Pericles, 1608 : " Absence abates that edge that presence whets." 
And Florio : " Spontare, — to abate the edge or point of any thing or wea- 
pon, to blunt, to unpoint." 

5 Reduce, again, in the Latin sense of bring back. See page 98, note 10. 



CRITICAL NOTES. 



Act I., Scene i. 

Page 49. That tempers him to this extremity. — So the quarto of 
1597. The quarto of 1598 corrupted tempers into tempts, thus leaving 
the verse defective; and the foHo, to complete the verse, printed "That 
tempts him to this harsh Extremity." 

P. 49. Beseech your Graces both to pardon m,e. — The old copies 
have "/beseech." In such phrases as "I beseech," "I pray," &c., 
the elision of the pronoun is too common in Shakespeare to need any 
special remark, 

P. 50. Well struck in years, fair, and not jealous. — The folio has 
jealious ; and, as a trisyllable is wanted here to complete the verse, 
perhaps it should be printed so. Walker asks, " Why not write 
jealious in this place ? " 

P. 50. And the Queen's kindred are made gentlefolks. — The old 
copies read "And //^a/ the Queenes Kindred." But the repetition of 
that is needless as regards the sense, and defeats the rhythm of the 
line. 

P. 50. Beseech your Grace to pardon me. — Here, again, the old 
editions have "/ beseech," and "/ do beseech." 

P. 52. Till George be packed with post-\\zsX.Q. up to Heaven. — So 
Collier's second folio. The old copies have post-horse instead of post- 
haste. In support of the old reading, Dyce quotes from the Induction 
to 2 King Henry IV., where Rumour speaks of " Making the wind my 
post-horse^ But it seems to me that the two cases are by no means 
parallel : there the instrument of motion was to be expressed, here the 
manner. 



204 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 



Act I., Scene 2. 

P. 58. Thou wast the cause, and most accursed th' effect. — So 
Hanmer. The old text reads " Thou was't the cause, and most accurst 
effectr 

P. 58. To undertake the death of all the world. 

So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom,. — So the folio. 
The quartos have rest instead of live. Lettsom would change live to 
lie, as the two words were often confounded. But live was probably 
meant in antithesis to death in the line before. 

P. 59. Not tvhen iny father York and Edward wept. — So Pope. 
The folio has No instead of Not. The line is not in the quartos. 

P. 62. With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes. 

The bleeding witness of her hatred by. — So the quartos. The 
folio has "witness of m,y hatred," which some editors prefer. But 
" witness of my hatred " to what? Richard is speaking of the causes 
which the Lady Anne has for hating himself, and he regards King 
Henry's death as one of them, and the presence of Henry's bleeding 
corse is a witness to that hatred. 

P. 63. Young, wise, and valiant, and, no doubt, right royal. — So 
Pope. The old text reads "Yong, Valiant, Wise, and (no doubt) 
right Royal." Surely there ought to be no hitch or halting in the metre 
here. Various ways of rectifying the verse have been proposed, but 
Pope's is the simplest. 

Act I., Scene 3. 

P. 64. Here come the Lords of Buckingham and Stanley. — Here 
and four times afterwards in this scene, as also in several other places, 
the old editions have Derby instead of Stanley ; but they have Stanley 
in a still larger number of places. In fact, the Lord Stanley of this 
play did not become Earl of Derby till after the accession of Henry 
VIL For this confusion of names or titles in the old copies it is not 



CRITICAL NOTES. 205 

easy to account ; but it seems hardly credible that it could have origi- 
nated with Shakespeare : at all events, I can see no sufficient reason 
for retaining it in the text, as some editors do. 

P. 67. That thereby he may gather 

The ground of your ill-will^ and %o remove it. — The quartos 
have " and to remove it." The correction is Capell's. The folio has 
merely " that he may learne the ground," omitting the rest. 

P. 70. As little joy enjoys the Queen thereof. — The old copies have 
"^ little joy." But A is no doubt a misprint for As ; for Margaret is 
running a variation upon what Elizabeth has just said, and the latter 
began her speech with "^j little joy." 

P. 73. Thou that wast seaPd in thy nativity 

The slave of Nature and the son of Hell. — It appears that 
some have stumbled at the words slave and son here. Collier's second 
folio has " The stain of nature and the scorn of Hell "; Singer's, "The 
shame of nature and the spawn of Hell." For my part, I have to con- 
fess that the words have never troubled me ; and I think Walker is 
right in saying that a slave of nature means " neither more nor less 
than a born villain.^'' 

P. 75. Riv. Peace, peace, for shauie, if not for charity. — The old 
text assigns this speech to Buckingham. But Margaret's reply to it, 
and her next speech, which is addressed to Buckingham, show that the 
prefix "Buc." must be wrong. Walker points out the error, and Lett- 
som remarks that perhaps the speech should be given to Rivers. 

Act I., Scene 4. 

P. 81. Brak. I will, my lord : God give your Grace good rest I — 
Sorrozv breaks seasons and reposing hours, &c. — So the 
quartos. Between these two lines, the folio has ''Enter Brakenbury 
the Lieutenant^'' and prefixes "Bra.''^ to the second line ; the preceding 
dialogue being between Clarence and the "Keeper, ^^ and having "Enter 
Clarence and Keeper " at the opening of the scene. Of course this is 



2o6 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

making the Lieutenant and the Keeper two distinct persons. Why the 
foHo made this change upon the quartos, is not very apparent, there 
being nothing gained by such variety of speakers. I must add that, in 
the last speech of Clarence before the entrance of Brakenbury, the 
folio has ''AA Keeper, Keeper , I have done these things," instead of 
*'0 Brakenbury, I have done those things." Also, in Brakenbury's 
speech a little after, the folio has " There lies the Duke asleepe, and 
there the keys," instead of '^Here are the keys ; there sits the duke 
asleep." White objects to the quarto arrangement and reading, that 
" it was a violation of all propriety to make Sir Robert Brakenbury, 
Lieutenant of the Tower, go about with a bunch of ponderous keys at 
his girdle or in his hand." But why may not the Lieutenant have 
taken the keys from one of his subordinates, for the purpose of visiting 
Clarence ? And is there not quite as much impropriety in making 
Clarence, a prince of the royal blood, unbosom himself so freely in a 
dialogue with a mere turnkey of the prison ? 

P. 83. I hope TOY holy humour will change, — So the quartos. The 
folio '^ this passionate humor of mine. ^^ Here, again, I prefer the 
quarto text, because the same speaker, in his next speech, says, " some 
certain dregs of conscience are yet within me." 

P. 88. Hast thou thai holy feeling in thy soul, &c. — In the quartos, 
this and the three following lines are addressed to the second murderer 
only, and in reply to what is said by him alone just before, *' Make 
peace with God." The folio reads "Have you that holy feeling in your 
soules^'' &c., and makes the whole speech an address to both the Mut' 
derers. 

P. 88. 2 Murd. What shall we do ? 

Clar. Relent, and save your souls. 

I Murd. Relent ! His cowardly and womanish. 

Clar. Not to relent is beastly, savage, devilish. — 
My friend, I spy some pity in thy looks ; 
Oy if thine eye be not a flatterer, 
Come thou on my side, and entreat for m.e : 
A begging prince what beggar pities not? 



CRITICAL NOTES. 20/ 

I Murd. Ay, [Stabbing him.] thus, and thus, &c. — So the 
first quarto, which is followed by Capell, Staunton, and Dyce in his 
last edition. The other quartos have the same, with only some slight 
variations. The folio has the following : 

2. Whall shall we do? 

Cla. Relent, and save your soules : 
Which of you, if you were a Princes Sonne, 
Being pent from Liberty, as I am now. 
If two such murtherers as your selves came to you. 
Would not intreatfor life, as you would begge 
Were you in tny distresse. 

1. Relent? no: 'Tis cowardly and womanish. 
Cla. Not to relent, is beastly, savage, divellish : 

My Friend, I spy some pitty in thy lookes : 
O, if thine eye be not a Flatterer, 
Come thou on my side, and intreate for mee, 
A begging Prince, what begger pitties not. 

2. Looke behinde you, my Lord. 
I. Take that, and that, &c. 

Here it is manifest that the folio additions serve no purpose but to 
embarrass and enfeeble the dialogue: besides, in some places it is 
hardly possible to make any sense out of them. To amend the latter 
fault, they have been variously tinkered at, but with only partial suc- 
cess. I therefore have no scruple of concurring with the other editors 
named in omitting them altogether as an unauthorized intrusion. 

P. 88. How fain, like Pilate, would I wash my hands 

Of this most grievous murder! — So the folio. The quartos 
have " Of this most grievous guilty murder done^ 



Act II,, Scene i. 

P. 92, Of you. Lord Rivers, — and. Lord Grey, of you. 
That all without desert have froivn'd on m,e ; — 
Dukes, earls, lords, gentlemen ; — indeed, of all. — So the quartos. 
Between the second and third of these lines, the folio has the follow- 
ing line : " Of you Lord Woodvill, and Lord Scales of you." Malone 
pointed out the fact, that there was no such person as Lord Woodville, 
and that Lord Scales was the oldest son of Earl Rivers. 



208 KING RICHARD THE THIRD, 



Act il, Scene 2. 

P. 100. Hast. And so in me ; and so, I think, in all: Sec. — The 
old copies assign this speech to Rivers ; which can hardly be right, as 
Rivers has all along been opposed to the faction who are here trying 
to dissemble their thoughts. The old copies also give the next speech 
to Hastings, which is here assigned to Stanley. The corrections are 
Capell's. 

Act II., Scene 4. 

P. 105. Q. Eliz. I^or what offence ? 

Mess. The sum of all I can I have disclosed: 
Why or for what these nobles were committed 
Is all unknown to me, my gracious lady. — The old copies 
assign the first of these speeches to the Archbishop; the quartos, with 
the prefix " Car.," the foHo, with " ArchP But the quartos have Lady 
at the end of the next speech, while the folio has Lord, thus making 
the correction in the wrong place. Johnson detected the error. 

Act III., Scene i. 

P. 109. You are too senseless-obstinate, my lord^ 

Too ceremonious and traditional ; 

Weigh it but zvith the grossness of this age. 

You break not sanctuary in seizing him : &c. — I here adopt 
the punctuation proposed by Heath. The pointing commonly fol- 
lowed, both in the old and in modern editions, sets a colon at the end 
of the second line, and a comma at the end of the third ; thus con- 
necting the third line with what follows, not with what precedes. With 
this pointing, I see no way but to accept Warburton's alteration of the 
text, " the greenness of his age," or something equivalent. With that 
change, the sense is, " If you consider the matter with due reference 
to the childish and tender age of the Prince, you break not sanctuary 
in taking him away." Here we have no want of logical coherence ; 
but, with the old reading and the old pointing, no such coherence 
seems possible. The passage has troubled editors a good deal ; and 
other textual changes have been proposed : CoUier's second folio has 



CRITICAL NOTES. 209 

" the goodness of his age "; and Lettsom notes that " the context seems 
to require a word like cunning or knowledge." I at one time thought 
that " grossness of this age " might refer to the gross abuses of sanctuary 
practised in that age ; but this consideration really does nothing towards 
healing the logical incoherence. ' However, as those abuses are largely 
insisted on in Buckingham's speech as reported by More, I subjoin a 
considerable extract from the latter : 

Now look how few sanctuary men there be whom necessity or misfortune compelled 
to go thither. And then see, on the other side, what a sort there be commonly therein 
of such whom wilful unthriftiness hath brought to naught. What a rabble of thieves, 
murderers, and malicious heinous traitors there be, and that in two places specially ; 
the one at the elbow of the city, and the other in the very bowels. I dare well avow 
it, if you weigh the good that they do, with the hurt that cometh of them, ye shall 
find it much better to lose both than to have both. And this I say, although they 
were not abused (as they now be, and long have been,) that I fear me ever they will 
be, while men be afeared to set-to their hands to the amendment, as though God and 
Saint Peter were the patrons of ungracious living. Now unthrifts riot and run in 
debt upon boldness of these places; yea, rich men run thither with poor men's goods; 
there they build, there they spend, and bid their creditors go whistle. Men's wives 
run thither with their husbands' plate, and say they dare not abide with their husbands 
for beating: thieves bring thither stolen goods, and live thereon. There devise they 
new robberies nightly, and steal out and rob, reave, and kill men, and come again into 
those places, as though those places gave them not only a safeguard for the harm that 
they have done, but a license also to do more mischief. Where a man is by lawful 
means in peril, there needeth he the tuition of some special privilege, which is the 
only ground of all sanctuaries ; from which necessity this noble prince is far, whose 
love to his king, nature and kindred proveth ; whose innocency to all the world, his 
tender youth affirmeth ; and so sanctuary, as for him, is not necessary. Men come 
not to sanctuary as they come to baptism, to require it by his godfathers : he must 
ask it himself that must have it ; and reason, sith no man hath cause to have it, but 
whose conscience of his own fault maketh him have need to require it. What will, 
then, hath yonder babe, which, if he had discretion to require it, if need were, I dare 
say would be now right angry with them that keep him there. A nd verily I have 
heard of sanctuary men, but I never heard before of sanctuary children. A nd 
he that taketh one out of sanctuary to do him good, I say plainly, he breaketh nc 
sanctuary. 

P. 109. This Prince hath neither claimed if nor deserved it ; 

Therefore, in mine opinion, cannot have it. — So the second 
folio. The earlier editions have "^;2^ therefore." Probably a repeti- 
tion by mistake from the second line above, "^??^ those who," &c. 

P. H2. I'd weigh it lightly, were it heavier. — So Hanmer. The 
old text has "/ weigh it lightly." 



210 KING RICHARD THE THIRD, 

P. 112. I would, that I might thank you, as — as — you call me. — 
The folio has " thank you, as, as, you call me." Modern editions 
print " thank you, as you call me." Walker quotes the line as given 
in the folio, and then adds, " Meaning, I suppose, 'as — as — you call 
me.' May not this be the right reading ? " 

P. 115. My lord, what shall we do, if we perceive 

Lord Hastings will not yield to our coTUplots ? — The old copies 
have '^Now, my Lord, "What shall wee doe." Here Now. does nothing 
but clog both sense and metre. Omitted by Pope. 

Act III., Scene 2. 

P. 120. Come the next Sabbath, and I will content you. — After this 
line, the folio makes the Priest answer, " He wait upon your Lordship." 
As these are precisely the words in which Hastings is there made to 
answer Buckingham a little after, it seems altogether probable that 
they were inserted twice by mistake. The quartos lack them in both 
places. 

Act III., Scene 3. 

P. 122. Make haste ; the hour of death is expirate. — The first folio 
has "the houre of death is expiate P For "is expiate^'' the second 
folio substitutes " is now expir''dP The quartos give the whole line 
thus: "Come, come, dispatch, the limit of your lives is out "; repeat- 
ing a line that occurs a little before. Steevens proposed expirate, and 
so Singer prints. The sense of expired is evidently wanted here ; and 
I more than doubt whether expiate was ever used in that sense. Nor 
can that sense be fairly drawn from any of the recognized meanings of 
the verb expio, while it is one of the commonest meanings of the Latin 
exspiratus or expiratus. It is true, the Poet's 22d Sonnet has " Then 
look I death my days should expiate " / but here again I have little 
doubt that expiate is a misprint for expirate. 

Act III., Scene 4. 

P. 122. Buck. Are all things ready for that royal time ? 

Stan. They are ; a^id wants but nomination. — So Capell. 
Instead of They are, the old text has // is. This was probably a soph- 



CRITICAL NOTES. 211 

istication introduced in order to make a subject for wants, whereas 
nomination is the subject of wants : " and there wants," or " there is 
wanting but the naming of the time." 

P. 125. What of his heart perceive you in his face 

By any likelihood he show'd to day. — So the quartos. The 
folio has lively hood instead of likelihood. Some editors prefer the folio 
reading, and support it by quoting from All's Well that Ends Well^ 
i. I : " The tyranny of her sorrows takes all livelihood from her cheek "; 
where livelihood is put for liveliness. But it seems to me that the two 
cases are by no means parallel. The sense of appearance or sign is 
plainly required in the text ; and likelihood may very well bear that 
sense. 

P. 125. Lovel and^zX.(^\?L, look that it be done. — See foot-note 10. 
As this scene is in London, and as in the preceding, which falls on the 
same day, Ratcliff is represented as being at Pomfret, Theobald here 
substituted Catesby for Ratcliff. But, as we have Ratcliif again in the 
next scene, which also falls on the same day, and as the change cannot 
there be made without taking too much liberty with the old text, I 
deem it best to let the impropriety pass. Should we undertake to rec- 
tify all the discrepancies of this sort in Shakespeare, we should be — 
one can hardly tell where. 

«■ Act in., Scene 5. 

P. 129. Because, my lord, we would have had you hear 

The traitor speak, &c. — The old text has " we would have had 
you heard." The Poet probably wrote heare, and we have many in- 
stances of final d and final e confounded. 

P. 130. Even where his raging eye or savage heart. 

Without control, listed to m,ake a prey. — So the folio. The 
quartos have "his lustfull eye." Pope changed raging to ranging. 
But " raging eye " is a good classical phrase, and Dryden has it in his 
translation of Virgil. 

Act III., Scene 7. 

P. 134. But, like dumb statuas or breathing stones. 

Stared on each other, and look'd deadly pale. — The old text has 



212 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

" dumb statues " / but the verse clearly requires a trisyllable, and statue 
was often used in all sorts of writing. All the quartos, except the first 
two, have breathlesse instead of breathing. Rowe printed " like dumb 
statues or unbreathing stones," and Lettsom proposes " like dumb 
statuas, unbreathing stones." But " breathing stones " seems to me 
better in itself, let alone the authority of the old copies. 

P. 136. He is not lolling on a lewd disc^-bed. — So Pope. The old 
copies have lulling for lolling; and the folio has love-bed instead of 
day-bed. The change of lulling to lolling is fully warranted from 
Troilus and Cressida, i. 3, where the old text has "The large Achilles, 
on his press'd bed lolling^ And I can hardly think that Buckingham 
would hint at the late King as " lolling on a lewd /oz/^-bed " in the 
day-time. 

P. 136. But sore I fear me shall not win him to it. — So Collier's 
second folio. The old copies have sure instead of sore. Dyce ap- 
proves the change by citing from The Merchant of Venice^ v. i : " I'll 
fear no other thing so sore as keeping safe Nerissa's ring." 

P. 137. Andy see, a book of prayer in his hand, — 

True ornament to know a holy man. — These two lines occur 
only in the folio, and that has ornaments. The misprinting of singu- 
lars and plurals for each other was very common. Of course the 
meaning is, " to know a holy man 3/." 

P. 138. Her face defaced with scars of infam.y. 
Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants. 

And almost shoulder'd in the swallowing gulf, &c. — The sec- 
ond of these lines is not in the quartos, and the folio has " His royal 
stock," — an obvious error. In the third line, Johnson proposed to 
read smoulder'' d instead of shouldered, and Walker approves of that 
reading. See, however, foot-note 15. 

P. 1 39. But my desert 

Unmeritable shuns jowr high request. — Walker would read 
shames instead of shuns. As in the old copies the word is spelt 
shunnes, it might easily be a misprint for shames. But shuns yields an 



CRITICAL NOTES. 213 

apt and forcible sense ; though the proposed change seems well worth 
considering. 

P. 141. / am not made of stone. — The old copies have stones; 
another clear instance of a plural misprinted for a singular. 

Act IV., Scene i. 

P. 143. Now^for my life, she^s wandering to the Tower ^ 

On pure heart ^s love, to greet the tender Princes. — These lines 
are not in the quartos, and the folio has " the tender Prince^ But 
Anne herself says a little after, that she is going to the Tower, " To 
gratulate the gentle Princes there." The correction is Theobald's. 

Act IV., Scene 4. 

P. 157. When didst Thou sleep while such a deed was done? — In- 
stead of while, \}iit. old text repeats when; probably by accident. The 
correction is Lettsom's. 

P. 158. I had an Edward, till a Richard kilV d him ; 

I had a Harry, till a Richard kilVd him. — So the Cambridge 
Editors. In the second Hne, the quartos have Richard instead of 
Harry, and the folio substitutes husband for Richard. A little before, 
Margaret says, "When holy Barry died," and the Duchess, a little 
after, " O Harry's wife, tritimph not in my woes ! " 

P. 158. That foul defacer of God's handiwork ; 

That excellent grand tyrant of the Earth, 

That reigns in gallhd eyes of weeping souls. — T>a.& last two of 
these lines are not in the quartos, and the folio has them transposed 
An unquestionable error, which was corrected by Capell. 

P. 161. For joyful mother, one that wails the name ; 
For queen, a very caitiff crown'd with care ; 
For one being sued-to, one that humbly sues ; 
.For one commanding all, obey'd of none ; 
For one that scorn'd at me, now scorn'd of me: 



214 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

Thus hath the course of justice wheeVd about. — So the quartos, 
which are followed by Capell, Staunton, and Dyce. The folio has, in- 
stead of the lines in Roman type, the following : 

For one being sued too, one that humbly sues : 
For Queene, a very Caytiffe, crown'd with care: 
For she that scorn'd at me, now scorn'd of me: 
For she being feared of all, now fearing one: 
For she commanding all, obey'd of none. 

P. 1 68. Even I : what think you of it, madam ? — Such is the read- 
ing of the quartos, except that they have "/ even I." The folio has 
" Even so : How thinke you of it ? " 

P. i68. Send to her, by the man that slew her brothers^ 

A pair of bleeding hearts ; thereon engraved 

Edward and York. — The old copies have " thereon ingrave." 
Collier's second folio has " thereon engraven^"" which gives the same 
sense. I prefer engraved, because we have very frequent instances of 
final d and final e confounded. 

P. 1 68. The purple sap from her sweet brothers' bodies. — This line 
is not in the quartos, and the folio has body instead of bodies. 

P. 1 68. Nay, then indeed she cannot choose but love thee. — This line 
also is wanting in the quartos, and the folio has hate instead of love, 
thus giving a sense not at all suited to the context. The correction is 
Tyrwhitt's. 

P. 169. Advantaging their loan with interest. — Not in the quartos. 
The folio has Love instead of loan. Corrected by Theobald. 

P. 171. Say, I, her sovereign, am her subject now. — So Pope. The 
quartos have love, the folio low, instead of now. 

P. 1 72. The unity the King thy brother made. — So the seventh 
quarto. The earlier quartos have " the King my brother made," — a 
palpable error, for which the folio substituted " the King my husband 
made." 



CRITICAL NOTES. 215 

P. 172. As I intend to prosper and repent, 
So thrive I in my dangerous affairs 

Of hostile arms. — So the folio. The quartos have attempt in- 
stead of affairs. I prefer the latter, because it seems more in keeping 
with the idea of hostile arms used defensively. 

P. 173. And be not peevish-fond in great designs. — The quartos 
have " be no\. peevish, fond'''' ; the folio, " be not peevish founds See 
foot-note 36. 

Act v., Scene 2. 

P. 181. Z"/^^ wretched, bloody, and usurping boar, 

That spoils your sutnmer fields and fruitful vines, 
Szvills your warm, blood like wash, and makes his trough 
In your embowelVd bosoms, &c. — So Capell. The old copies 
have spoiVd instead of spoils. Shakespeare has indeed other like in- 
stances of abrupt change of tense, but here the change makes a bad 
hitch in the sense. — Some have stumbled at the word wretched in the 
first of these lines. Collier's second folio substitutes reckless, and 
Walker pronounces wretched " palpably wrong." But wretched, I 
think, may very well bear the sense of hateful or cursed, or nearly that ; 
and so the Poet elsewhere uses it ; as in Othello, v. i, where Roderigo, 
on receiving his death-wound from lago, exclaims, "O wretched 
villain ! " 

Act v., Scene 3. 

P. 184. K. Rich. What is'' to'' clock? 

Gate. Ifs supper-time, m^y lord ; 

Ifs nine o'clock. — So the folio. The quartos have sixe instead 
of nine. Six 0'' clock disorders the time of the scene ; for Richmond 
has before said the " weary Sun hath made a golden set," and at that 
season, August, the Sun did not set till after seven. We are not to 
suppose, though, that nine 0'' clock was the usual supper-time at that 
period : on the contrary, Harrison tells us in the Preface to Holinshed, 
"The nobilitie, gentrie, and students ordinarilie go to dinner at eleven 
before noone, and to supper 2Xfive, or betweene five and six, at after- 
noone»" Verplanck remarks upon the matter thus : " It seems, then, 
that the Poet, perceiving that the conduct of the scene required a later 



2l6 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

hour, and wishing to preserve the incident of Richard's refusing to sup, 
altered the time to what, though not the common supper hour, might 
well be that of an army, which had just encamped, after a march." 

P. 184. I will not sup to-night. — 

What, is my beaver easier than it was ? — So Pope, Hanmer, 
and Capell. Between these two lines, the old text has the hemistich, 
" Give me some ink and paper," — the same words that Richmond has 
used a little before. Here the words are at least useless, as Richard 
says, a little after, "Is ink and paper ready ?" How the words got 
repeated here, is not easy to say: Capell thinks the printers put 
them in by mistake, " from having their eye caught by a line opposite." 

P. 186. Well, set it down. — Is ink and paper ready? — The old 
text is without the word Well, thus making bad work with the metre 
of the line. Pope mended the breach by inserting There ; Capell, by 
inserting So. 

P. 188. Harry, that prophesied thou shouldst be king. 

Doth comfort thee in sleep : live thou, and flourish ! — So Rowe 
and Collier's second folio. The old text omits thou in the second line. 

P. 189. Let fall thy pointless lance: despair, and die! — So Col- 
lier's second folio. The old text lacks pointless. Some epithet is 
plainly needful here, Capell inserted hurtless. 

P. 189. Think on Lord Hastings : so despair, and die I — So Col- 
lier's second folio. The old text lacks so. Pope completed the verse 
by inserting and. 

P. 190. To-morrow in the battle think on me. 

And fall thy edgeless sword : despair, and die I — Here Col- 
lier's second folio hdiS powerless arm for edgeless sword. Dyce thinks 
the latter is " an accidental repetition from the speech of Clarence's 
ghost." 

P. 191. Then fly. What, from myself ? Great reason why, — 

Lest I revenge iriyself upon myself. — The old copies have th*" 



CRITICAL NOTES. 217 

second line thus: "Lest I revenge. What? my Selfe upon my 
Selfe ? " Here What evidently crept in by mistake from the line 
above. 

P. 192. K. Rich. O Ratdiff, I fear, I fear I 

Methought the souls of all that I had murder' d 
Came to my tent ; and every one did threat 
To-morrow's vengeance on the head of Richard. 

Rat. Nay, good my lord, be not afraid of shadows. — In the 
old copies, the last three lines of Richard's speech are placed at the 
close of Richard's soliloquy, before the entrance of Ratcliff, With this 
arrangement, there is no apparent ground or reason for Ratcliff's 
saying, " be not afraid of shadows." The transposition was proposed 
by Mason. 

P. 193. Methought their souls, zuhose bodies Richard murder'' d. 

Came to my tent, and cried. On ! victory ! — So Warburton. 
The old copies read " and cried on Victory.'" Pope changed this to 
"cried out Victory." Shakespeare has the phrase to cry on repeat- 
edly ; but in most other cases it means to " exclaim against " / a 
meaning evidently unsuited to the context here. 

P. 194. Sound, drums and trumpets, boldly, cheerfully. — So Pope 
and ColHer's second folio. The old text has." boldly and cheerfully." 

P. 195. They thus directed, we ourself will follow, &c. — So Pope. 
The old copies lack ourself, thus leaving a gap in the verse where, 
evidently, there ought to be none. 

P. 196. Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold. — The old copies have 
"be not so bold" and "be not to bold." The Chronicles suggest the 
correction. 

P. 197. To desperate ventures and assured destruction. — So Capell. 
The old copies have adventures instead of ventures. 

P. 197. They would ^^.'s^x2^xx the one, distain the other. — So Warbur- 
ton, Walker, and Collier's second folio. The old text has restraint 



2l8 KING RICHARD THE THIRD. 

instead of distrain. The former word was never used in a sense 
suited to the context, while Shakespeare has the latter twice at least in 
just the sense here required. See foot-note 26. 

P. 198. Off with his son George's head! — Hanmer printed "Off 
instantly with his son George's head," and it would seem that some 
such qualifying word is fairly required. 

Act v., Scene 5. 

P. 1 99. They fight, and exeunt fighting. — - Instead of this, the old 
copies have ^^ they fight ^ Richard is slaine"; and then add "Enter 
Richmond, Derby bearing the Crowne^^ &c. Here we have a plain 
contradiction, as Stanley is made to enter, and bring the crown, into 
the same place where Richard lies dead ; which of course implies the 
slaying of him to have taken place somewhere else. But it is ad- 
mitted, I believe, on all hands, that the stage-directions in the old 
copies are often badly confused, and that, in many instances at least, 
they were supplied by the players. Perhaps it was the custom in 
Shakespeare's time, as it still is, to have Richard killed before the 
audience. — I must add, that neither the fourth nor the fifth scene of 
this Act is so marked in the old copies ; but the course of the action 
fairly implies a change of scene in both places. Such changes indeed 
were often left to the imagination of the audience ; owing, probably, 
to the scant arrangements for scene- shifting on the old stage. Here 
the marking of the fifth scene, though not less necessary than that of 
the fourth, was left to be made by Dyce. 

P. 200. But tell me now, is young George Stanley living? — So 
Dyce. The old text lacks now. Pope filled up the gap in the metre 
by insertingy^^j^. 

P. 200. All this divided York and Lancaster, 

Of now let Richmond and Elizabeth, 

The true succeeders of each royal House., — 

Divided in their dire division, — 

By God^s fair ordinance conjoin together I — In the old copies, 
the fourth of these lines is printed as the second. This arrangement 
makes the sense very obscure, to say the least, and has caused a deal 



CRITICAL NOTES. 219 

of trouble to the editors, who, it seems, cannot yet agree about either 
the meaning or the punctuation of the passage. Mr. White so punctu- 
ates it as to give the same meaning which is here given, except in the 
first of the five lines, where I think he errs in taking divided as a verb, 
and not as a participle, and so making York and Lancaster the objects 
of it ; as if the foregoing particulars were the cause, and not the con- 
sequences, of the quarrel. The sense of that line I take to be, " All 
this division ^York and Lancaster." And I have little doubt that the 
fourth line as here printed got transposed, by some mistake, into the 
place of the second; an error which those who are at all practised in 
the mysteries of printing can easily understand. 



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